Go ahead, turn away from those desperate women haunting Baltimore’s grimy city streets. Pretend exploitation, abuse and murder of the most vulnerable among us are not our problem. Ignore the pathetic cruising men who feed on hopelessness.
Turn away. Pretend. Ignore. Then suffer the consequences.
Suffer the spread of AIDS and syphilis and gonorrhea and herpes and chlamydia and now, according to the blogs of self-described local whoremongers, staphylococci.
Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon on Wednesday — pretending she just got to town — vowed Charm City finally is working 24/7 to save fallen women, catch their murderers and put an end to human trafficking here. Too little, too late.
Prostitution is the perfect way to spread disease — either incurable or quickly becoming so as our irresponsible practices breed drug resistance — from the urban core to surrounding suburbs.
Anyone deluded enough to deny police and prostitutes’ claims most customers are not from the ’hood is beyond the reach of reason. Reasonable, concerned citizens understand that what happens in Baltimore certainly does not stay in Baltimore.
It rides back to suburbia with the “Johns.”
The fact that at least 27 Baltimore prostitutes could be slain in a decade with arrests in only six tells us more than an ancient tale of indifference. Unsolved slayings and more than 300 deaths a year ruled “undetermined” tell us the politics of hiding social decay transcend our real need for solutions.
This all, of course, was happening while Martin O’Malley was mayor and Dixon was president of the City Council. They forced it to fester below the shiny facade of mythical Baltimore being reborn.
Now, six homicides this year —including the stepdaughter of former Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm — expose deep systemic infection. The prostitution problems in Baltimore were not fully recognized until Hamm’s stepdauhter, someone “important,” died.
This goes beyond the usual liberal weeping about sexism, racism and social inequity. Certainly it overwhelms the usual conservative rant about morality.
This is a real, immediate crisis. The Baltimore-Towson statistical area ranking second in America for reported AIDS infections is one tangible indicator.
No one can say for sure how much prostitution contributes. We do know prostitution and drug addiction combine into a perfect storm to spread contagion. Public health officials tell us AIDS and other incurable or drug-resistant sexually transmitted diseases are creating a time bomb we ignore at our peril, bequeathing misery and devastating cost to our children and grandchildren.
Ignoring the slaying of prostitutes for a decade is an inescapable symptom of this negligence. The fact of it indicts us all for indifference at best.
Dealing with drug addiction and prostitution as purely health and economic problems is not something that is going to happen. So, how should we take action?
- Support the churches and advocacy groups courageously trying to help these women.
- Demand that law enforcement bear down on customers as well as prostitutes.
- Hold accountable the politicians who more than looked the other way for a decade.
Read more about the killings and Baltimore’s reaction
Records: 5th Baltimore City strangling victim a prostitute
Suspected Baltimore predator may face more charges
The fix is greater than the fear: Working Baltimore’s streets
The 3-minute interview: Sidney Ford
Allegations of serial predator shock Baltimore neighborhood
Who is killing the prostitutes?
Death on Baltimore City streets rattle local sex workers
Pigtown residents fight to take back streets
State grant money to fund Prostitution Court, provide treatment
Four prostitutes strangled since April
