{"id":182259,"date":"2026-02-18T01:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/182259\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T01:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T01:21:07","slug":"getting-caught-buying-sex-in-oakland-could-now-mean-thousands-of-dollars-in-new-fines-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/182259\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting caught buying sex in Oakland could now mean thousands of dollars in new fines \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"

OAKLAND \u2014 City Hall here is taking a tougher stand against pimps and johns across the city, which has become known for hosting the largest open-air sex trafficking market<\/a> in the Bay Area.<\/p>\n

The City Council granted final approval Tuesday to an ordinance that significantly ups the fines and consequences for anyone caught buying sex in the city, while also targeting the people trafficking women and the property owners allowing the industry to flourish in their buildings.<\/p>\n

City leaders say they want to refocus law enforcement\u2019s efforts away from punishing the young women and girls being exploited along \u201cThe Blade\u201d \u2014 that stretch along International Boulevard made infamous for the numerous killings, robberies and drug deals accompanying the region\u2019s sex trade \u2014 and toward the people who have profited the most from that prostitution.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the law aims to funnel more money toward the women seeking an escape from the streets.<\/p>\n

Councilmember Charlene Wang, who proposed the ordinance, stressed that the new fines \u201cadd another form of accountability that is faster and more certain than just relying on the criminal justice system alone.\u201d<\/p>\n

At an early February meeting, Wang decried the city\u2019s sex trade as exploiting \u201csome of our young people who have suffered some of the most horrific abuses.\u201d She said \u201cfamilies are fed up with this problem\u201d in East Oakland, particularly given how pimps have been seen trying to recruit children going to school near \u201cThe Blade,\u201d while convenience stores in the area now sell lingerie in a nod to the local sex trade.<\/p>\n

Just last month, gunmen ambushed two brothers<\/a> operating a late-night lingerie store hawking see-through lingerie, fishnet clothing and high-heeled faux leather boots, killing one of the men and wounding the other<\/a>. No motive has been revealed for the killing at the store, which had previously been derided on Yelp as a \u201cpro human trafficking business\u201d and a store with \u201cno shame.\u201d<\/p>\n

It marked merely the latest instance of gunfire along that stretch of International Boulevard, where teenagers and prostitutes routinely lure men into vehicles or motel rooms before their traffickers rob them at gunpoint<\/a> of their cash and car keys.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne part of this is targeting demand,\u201d Wang said. \u201cThere are challenges with targeting the pimps, and ultimately we will be here every\u00a0single year discussing how do we provide services to victims\u00a0if we don\u2019t ultimately address the source.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ordinance specifically amps up fines for \u201csex purchasers, sex traffickers and properties used for prostitution,\u201d according to a staff memo prepared ahead of Tuesday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n

For people caught loitering to buy sex, those fines could reach up to $4,000 for a first offense and $8,000 for every subsequent conviction. People found trafficking others could be fined up to $10,000 the first time they\u2019re caught, and up to $20,000 for each time after that. All fines would be tripled if police find that minors were involved.\n<\/p>\n

Property owners allowing \u201clewdness or prostitution\u201d at their site could face up to $2,500 in public nuisance fines.<\/p>\n

Any money collected from the new law would go to a newly created Human Trafficking Survivor Support Fund, which would dole out money to local nonprofits and other entities directly helping people who have been trafficked for sex. That fund would likely be overseen \u2014 and the funds from it dispersed \u2014 by the city\u2019s Department of Violence Prevention, Wang said at a Feb. 3 council meeting. But that system had yet to be finalized when the ordinance was initially passed that day.<\/p>\n

City officials expect the new ordinance to bring in anywhere between $250,000 and $450,000 a year from citations written by police officers, the staff memo said. The Dream Youth Clinic, S.H.A.D.E. and Love Never Fails were specifically named in that memo as the types of organizations that might financially benefit from the new fund.<\/p>\n

The ordinance comes amid a growing focus at the state level to root out sex trafficking across California by going after people overseeing the sex trade or patronizing it. Often, those efforts have focused on the issue of loitering for the purposes of prostitution.<\/p>\n

In 2022, state lawmakers decriminalized loitering with the intent to commit prostitution in California. The bill, proposed by San Francisco-based state Sen. Scott Weiner, aimed to address concerns by the American Civil Liberties Union that the old law was too subjective, leaving women of color open to discrimination and unfair police stops.<\/p>\n

In June, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation that made it a misdemeanor to loiter with the intent to purchase commercial sex. The law also imposed a $1,000 fine for doing so, and established a state fund to collect money from those fines for organizations helping sex trafficking victims.<\/p>\n

Oakland city leaders framed their new ordinance as going further than the recently passed state law, while ensuring that more money made its way to local nonprofits helping East Bay trafficking victims.<\/p>\n

While proclaiming his \u201cfull support\u201d for the measure, Councilman Noel Gallo voiced concern at the council\u2019s Feb. 3 meeting that law enforcement needed to do more to enforce the laws surrounding human trafficking in the city, \u201cotherwise we\u2019re doing more policy, more talking, more feeling sorry and making excuses for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He explicitly called out police and other law enforcement agencies for not doing more, saying \u201cenforcement needs to increase, and pushback on the street needs to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all see it \u2014 you see it, I see it, everyone here sees it,\u201d said Gallo, of the city\u2019s open-air sex market. \u201cBut we have to enforce the laws.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Aisha Mays, founder and CEO of Dream Youth Clinic, praised the ordinance as \u201creally promising\u201d for her clients, nearly half of whom report being sexually trafficked in the Oakland area. In particular, the money raised \u201ccan be so impactful for addressing social scarcity that already made young people really vulnerable\u201d to sex trafficking.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to address demand,\u201d Mays added. The new law, she said, sends a message to johns that \u201cif they come to Oakland to try to buy young people for sex, they are going to be penalized, and that Oakland takes it very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND \u2014 City Hall here is taking a tougher stand against pimps and johns across the city, which…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[389,184,861,7,8,409,723,138,332,1529,9858,3650,181,23,205,100,143,145,144,13,385],"class_list":{"0":"post-182259","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-alameda-county","9":"tag-bay-area","10":"tag-bay-area-crime","11":"tag-california","12":"tag-california-news","13":"tag-city-politics","14":"tag-crime","15":"tag-crime-and-public-safety","16":"tag-east-bay","17":"tag-east-bay-crime","18":"tag-east-oakland","19":"tag-human-trafficking","20":"tag-latest-headlines","21":"tag-local-news","22":"tag-local-politics","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-oakland","25":"tag-oakland-headlines","26":"tag-oakland-news","27":"tag-politics","28":"tag-regional"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182259\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}