It’s about noon on Harry Hines Boulevard in northwest Dallas.
A young woman wearing a short dress and sandals is on the phone, pacing back and forth on a busy corner in the 2600 block of Southwell Road.
Another woman walks down Harry Hines in a thong. She turns when she sees the NBC 5 camera.
Business owners say this is blatant and straightforward, even for hardened Harry Hines Boulevard, with its long history of prostitution.
One store owner told NBC 5 that Friday mornings are especially busy.
“Johns” have been paid and are looking for company.
“I would say there are 30 to 50 girls at any given time in our district 635 and Northwest Highway,” said Drew McGill, a broker who represents $38 million in properties in Northwest Dallas. “Ten years ago, a lot of this was happening in the Design District.”
Growth in the Design District has simply pushed more prostitution into northwest Dallas, he said.
“Everything was crushed and now it’s here,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s become so problematic that it’s no longer a middle of the night thing, it’s a middle of the day thing. You have that along with really violent homeless people. Petty theft is skyrocketing.”
McGill and other weary business owners, a few dozen he said, met with Dallas police in a private meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss ongoing concerns.
The meeting came weeks after a shooting was reported near Parker University on Walnut Hill Lane.
Organizers did not allow media participation.
McGill welcomed the meeting that he says was the first of its kind in several years, but says many people left without feeling heard.
“I think [police] I just wanted to present: Hey, crime is down 14%,” he said. “Everyone was in an uproar. You could feel the energy. It’s simply not necessary.
Luis Nuno, owner of a business in the area, participated in the meeting and said that a lot of people were ‘upset’.
“The lack of resources allocated to our police department by our city’s elected officials is obvious,” Nuno said.
Both men say the problem is not that the police are not doing their job, but that more resources are needed.
“They said, we can’t dedicate more people here because we don’t have enough agents to take care of this situation,” said Nuno.
McGill says DPD should take a different approach when deciding what resources are needed in the area that is largely industrial and home to warehouses.
According to DPD’s online crime map, there have been 93 arrests for solicitation of prostitution so far this year. Most of the arrests occurred in the Northwest Division.
In a statement provided to NBC 5, DPD spokesperson Kristin Lowman said:
“While preventing violent crime is a priority for the department, so are our community’s concerns about prostitution. Since March, the department has conducted four operations targeting people soliciting prostitution in the Northwest Division. The operations, which resulted in more of 80 arrests, were in response to concerns raised by business owners and community members in areas most affected by prostitution. These four operations took place in the Northwest Division, but efforts will continue throughout our city.”
DPD will continue to listen to the concerns of our residents and will continue to work to combat this issue.
