About people attended the San Antonio Neighborhood Safety Action forum Saturday to see how three Oakland mayoral candidates and two Alameda County supervisor District 3 candidates plan to stop prostitution on East 15th Street. Neighbors said East 15th Street used to be a quiet street but, after the city reconfigured International Boulevard also known as East 14th Street , sex workers moved a block over to East 15th.
Resident Estefani Zarate pushes her stroller past the sex workers -- some wearing bikinis and some in see-through tops -- on a daily basis. That was why she and her family came to Saturday's candidate event -- not only to listen but also to demand a solution to the problem.
Many families said that, aside from prostitution, they're also fed up with homeless encampments and gun violence. We need to send the message that, in Oakland, we're going to enforce the law when people come to violate the law.
Many neighbors want to close East 15th Street to non-resident car traffic. They want cops to go after pimps and johns. They also want resources to help sex workers get away from this line of work. Why does Oakland let people do things like that? Most neighbors said they would like to leave but can't afford to move so their only hope is that city leaders will stop this problem.
Da grew up in Oakland, and before his return to the Bay Area, he spent five years covering the news at three other television stations in Texas, Southern and Central California. He also spent five years reporting at KRON 4.
