Women wearing only «thongs» while bending over in front of traffic has become an increasingly common sight in National City, California, as prostitution problems soar after the implementation of a controversial state law, the mayor said from the city to News21USA.

«They’re waving at people on the freeway or, to be honest, they’re leaning toward the freeway. I don’t know how else to say it; they’re showing off their wares,» said National City Mayor Ron. Morrison told News21USA in an interview this month.

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 357 in July 2022, which repealed a previous law that prohibited loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution. The law went into effect in January of this year, and Morrison argued that the moment Newsom’s pen touched the bill, the state’s pimps knew they could expand their prostitution enterprises with few repercussions from authorities.

«The moment it was signed by the governor, boom, everyone knew the rules were gone,» Morrison told News21USA.

«Those who are on the street, most of them are wearing less than what would be considered a light robe. It’s just showing off in everyone’s face. And that’s why a lot of people are yelling, ‘Hey, you know, can you?’ Don’t you get them for indecent exposure?’ «And the problem is the way our laws are read in this state. The definition of indecent exposure is as long… as the genitals are covered. Anything else is fair game in public.»

National City is a diverse, working-class city of about 60,000 residents just outside San Diego on the Bay, Morrison said. Prostitution problems are not foreign to the city, and the mayor explained that as an urban area, sex workers have been known to cross the San Diego city border, but never at the rate he is currently seeing.

«Much more than brazen,» Morrison said of what he’s seeing on his streets.

The prostitutes gather in an area of the city center facing a highway and are most often seen early in the morning and around 3 p.m. Morrison added that another new California law that legalized jaywalking has compounded the problems, with some women stopping in traffic to lure a customer.

«The other day I was driving down one of the streets and there was a young girl standing in the middle of the street wearing basically a thong, and that was it, and a couple of empanadas. But she’s right in front of my car, I couldn’t So I asked her very politely, ‘Would you please get off the street?’ And she looked at me and said, ‘If you don’t want to talk to me, you can walk around,'» Morrison said.

Businesses from mom-and-pop stores to national hotel chains have told the mayor that prostitutes are driving away business and have forced some companies to refund families who were shocked to see nearly naked women during their California getaway.

Even a local school covered its windows after prostitutes were repeatedly found loitering near its doors, Morrison said.

The mayor maintains that the issue boils down to Senate Bill 357, which he called an «idiotic law» that should be known as the «Safe Streets for Pimps Initiative,» which has supposedly not only left his town and other municipalities in the state grappling with an increase in sex workers on the street, but it has also encouraged human trafficking.

«This has just opened the floodgates to prostitution, sex trafficking, child sex trade, I mean, you name it. This has obviously done that. And I don’t think anyone who isn’t purely politically motivated can disagree with that, «Morrison said.

The mayor described himself as a «nonpartisan» person who has worked at various levels of government for more than 30 years, whose main focus is «taking care of the people in National City and their businesses» and not playing politics in Sacramento.

Senate Bill 357 was authored by Democratic state Senator Scott Wiener, who defended the bill as one that would help protect transgender women from being assaulted by police.

«[The previous law] allowed police officers to arrest a person not based on what they did but solely on how they looked,» Wiener told local media earlier this year. «So an officer might arrest someone because he was wearing tight clothing, high heels, and extra lipstick.»

News21USA Digital previously spoke with members of the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST), which is one of the largest and oldest direct service providers for survivors of sex and labor trafficking in the US, who said who supported the bill «because we know «Reducing the criminalization of survivors will help prevent human trafficking.

«Traffickers rely on our systems to criminalize victims so that they cannot access safety because of their background and are vulnerable to continued exploitation,» Leigh LaChapelle, associate director of survivor advocacy at CAST, told News21USA, earlier this year after the law went into effect.

«The impact of these encounters with law enforcement reinforces the stigma already heightened when someone is arrested for this crime due to difficulties in obtaining employment and safe housing with a history of arrests related to the sex trade,» LaChapelle added. «Violation of this discriminatory law also puts immigrants at risk of deportation, loss of residency, or denial of reentry due to a misdemeanor conviction.»

Prostitution remains illegal in California, but Morrison said the new law has effectively legalized the crime as police stop intervening or interacting with women.

«Senate Bill 357, which for all intents and purposes legalized prostitution because what it said is that officers can no longer contact people based on the idea of loitering for the purpose of prostitution. So it basically tells the police don’t touch hands,» Morrison said.

He noted that some of the girls on the street appear to be underage, although the amount of makeup sex workers wear makes it difficult to gauge their age, and the city has previously seen girls as young as 12 working on the streets.

«A lot of times [police] found out that these were minors… or that they were basically being sex trafficked, and they were able to get them out of that. Now, they basically have no legal opportunity to even talk to them,» Morrison said.

With prostitution brazenly on the streets, other crimes have also followed, including shootings and assaults. Morrison said that just a few weeks ago an eight-month pregnant prostitute was kidnapped, beaten and raped.

«Those [crime incidents] show up in our crime statistics. We’ve had shootings, everything else that involves prostitutes and pimps. So those crime statistics show up in us. These people don’t live here in National City and the people here «We don’t want them, but we’re getting the crime statistics,» he said.
Morrison said he is working with the local district attorney and police department to come up with ways on how to navigate state laws while clearing streets. The police department has conducted «sting operations» in the past, but such operations require a team of about 30 officers, which would translate to half the city’s police force, and weeks of planning, Morrison said.

«People here are not happy about this in the least. And the problem is that they expect us locally to do something about it. And we are sitting here with our hands behind our backs and in the handcuffs that they put on us in Sacramento,» Morrison said.