Oakland's July 7 hearing on closing 9th, 10th and 11th Avenues to disrupt sex trafficking arrives with no cost estimate, no baseline data, and a record of displacement.
I appreciate council member Wang for being honest about the probability for success from this proposal. I have no doubt that if this approach doesnt work, she will claim so and, likely, pivot to another solution instead of doubling down by spouting ideological non-sense and asking for more funding which is the de facto route that grifting "leaders" resort to.
Why aren’t we working to disrupt sex work by making it safer? More profitable for the people doing the work? This seems like moving a problem around rather than actually solving it.
I think OPD has operations doing just that. This is another flank to the problem and like Wang said, it makes the crimes more visible - hopefully leading to more arrests.
I give CM Wang some credit here. This is a simple pilot project to see what, if any, impact it has on the sex trade on E14. It may work. It may not. DOT (meaning me) proposed the idea to CM Wang. We agreed to a pilot project. That’s the beauty of a pilot. Rather than debating over who was the correct vision of the future, we can just do it. No need to spend two years planning and studying. Just do it. That was the call from the community as well. Stop talking. Do something. Right now, we have four “guaranteed” outcomes. Would you like to go on record and make a prediction?
The CM is using her discretionary money - discretionary transportation money. You know money comes in flavors in government. We wanted to do more, but the funds weren’t available. DOT has been doing traffic counts before and will do traffic counts after. There is a requirement in the California vehicle code that council must approve road closures. That’s what this legislation does.
I have certainly butted heads with CM Wang on occasion. On the issue of human trafficking, I believe she is sincere and is will to take out-of-the box efforts to improve the quality of life along the Blade. I commend her for that and support her in this effort.
So, do you care to venture a guess on how the behavior will change? I’ve already logged my prediction.
Also, have you noticed all the paving taking place in D2 currently? That would make for a fun report - a positive story.
Thank you and considering the crime rate that Oaklanders experience daily, we need to try and try again while being honest on whether the ideas are working or not.
One area we (DOT) are pursuing is a solar street light pilot. We get LOTS of copper wire stolen. We know crime rates and crash rates are higher at night. Check out Atlanta’s Light Up the Night program. The idea originated with a senior design class at Georgia Tech. My deputy commissioner in Atlanta is one of the most brilliant people I know, and he built a viable P3 economic model. I did all the legislating and negotiating. It has been a huge success. I’ve lost track of things a little bit, but I think Atlanta is on its 4th phase of the program. My team delivered Phase 1. I’m a firm believer in the “eyes on the street” being a significant deterrent. We need Oaklanders to be safe at night. The harder part is we Oaklanders to feel safe at night. Those are often two entirely different things.
One more Atlanta story, and I will shut up. We also learned in Atlanta that in the absence of an engineered solution that often times the best action was to introduce chaos. We called it street racing in the A. We call it sideshows in the O. We never tried to figure out their behavior. We just followed them around and interrupted the activity. We were the party poopers!! It was quite successful. We are doing similar things here and are finding success. We just don’t have the staff to scale up to a citywide initiative.
Great article, thanks. Closing streets and barricades will not solve the sex and human trafficking. As you indictated in your article, this just moves the problem to another area. This approach should not go forward. We need a tough approach, in which we go after the networks of sex traficking, and shut them down. We also need to change state laws, which prohibits our police from arresting prostitutes and child prosititution. Our police used to be allowed to get the young children off the streets and into safe places. There is so much to say on this matter, but I will leave it this for now. Mindy Pechenuk, candidate for Oakland Mayor 2026
I appreciate council member Wang for being honest about the probability for success from this proposal. I have no doubt that if this approach doesnt work, she will claim so and, likely, pivot to another solution instead of doubling down by spouting ideological non-sense and asking for more funding which is the de facto route that grifting "leaders" resort to.
To quote a wise and venerable frat boy: I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
A politically cosmetic, thoughtless, kick-the-can response by a council member. Thx for the story Oakland Report!
Why aren’t we working to disrupt sex work by making it safer? More profitable for the people doing the work? This seems like moving a problem around rather than actually solving it.
I think OPD has operations doing just that. This is another flank to the problem and like Wang said, it makes the crimes more visible - hopefully leading to more arrests.
I give CM Wang some credit here. This is a simple pilot project to see what, if any, impact it has on the sex trade on E14. It may work. It may not. DOT (meaning me) proposed the idea to CM Wang. We agreed to a pilot project. That’s the beauty of a pilot. Rather than debating over who was the correct vision of the future, we can just do it. No need to spend two years planning and studying. Just do it. That was the call from the community as well. Stop talking. Do something. Right now, we have four “guaranteed” outcomes. Would you like to go on record and make a prediction?
The CM is using her discretionary money - discretionary transportation money. You know money comes in flavors in government. We wanted to do more, but the funds weren’t available. DOT has been doing traffic counts before and will do traffic counts after. There is a requirement in the California vehicle code that council must approve road closures. That’s what this legislation does.
I have certainly butted heads with CM Wang on occasion. On the issue of human trafficking, I believe she is sincere and is will to take out-of-the box efforts to improve the quality of life along the Blade. I commend her for that and support her in this effort.
So, do you care to venture a guess on how the behavior will change? I’ve already logged my prediction.
Also, have you noticed all the paving taking place in D2 currently? That would make for a fun report - a positive story.
Thank you and considering the crime rate that Oaklanders experience daily, we need to try and try again while being honest on whether the ideas are working or not.
One area we (DOT) are pursuing is a solar street light pilot. We get LOTS of copper wire stolen. We know crime rates and crash rates are higher at night. Check out Atlanta’s Light Up the Night program. The idea originated with a senior design class at Georgia Tech. My deputy commissioner in Atlanta is one of the most brilliant people I know, and he built a viable P3 economic model. I did all the legislating and negotiating. It has been a huge success. I’ve lost track of things a little bit, but I think Atlanta is on its 4th phase of the program. My team delivered Phase 1. I’m a firm believer in the “eyes on the street” being a significant deterrent. We need Oaklanders to be safe at night. The harder part is we Oaklanders to feel safe at night. Those are often two entirely different things.
One more Atlanta story, and I will shut up. We also learned in Atlanta that in the absence of an engineered solution that often times the best action was to introduce chaos. We called it street racing in the A. We call it sideshows in the O. We never tried to figure out their behavior. We just followed them around and interrupted the activity. We were the party poopers!! It was quite successful. We are doing similar things here and are finding success. We just don’t have the staff to scale up to a citywide initiative.
Great article, thanks. Closing streets and barricades will not solve the sex and human trafficking. As you indictated in your article, this just moves the problem to another area. This approach should not go forward. We need a tough approach, in which we go after the networks of sex traficking, and shut them down. We also need to change state laws, which prohibits our police from arresting prostitutes and child prosititution. Our police used to be allowed to get the young children off the streets and into safe places. There is so much to say on this matter, but I will leave it this for now. Mindy Pechenuk, candidate for Oakland Mayor 2026