Nice vice squad

NYPD’s angels aid abused sex workers

The NYPD has a new weapon in its battle against sex traffickers — brave civilian women armed only with open ears and hearts.

Female nonprofit workers are now going undercover into city massage parlors suspected of being brothels to talk with the mostly immigrant women who work there and try to get them help.

The sex workers “are being beaten, they’re being strangled, they’re being stabbed in some cases and frequently raped. And so when our staff are going in, a lot of the conversations have been, ‘Are you feeling safe?’ ” said Lori Cohen of the advocacy group Sanctuary for Families.

The initiative stems from a city push to bust more johns and traffickers and fewer prostitutes.

But prostitutes are afraid of speaking to authorities after years of arrests. So Cohen’s group and two others began going out with NYPD vice teams to help win their trust.

“We tell them who we are and what we can do for them,’’ said Susan Liu of the women’s advocacy group Garden of Hope.

The nonprofit workers arrives at a business with cops, who tell the managers that they’re there to do license inspections.

The officers then ask if they can talk to the predominantly Asian female workers — escorting the women to a room so that the Mandarin-speaking nonprofit staffers can chat with them.

Cohen said her staffers try to share information with the women and then stay in contact with them through the WeChat app, which is popular in China.

“What they don’t do, they don’t go in and start interviewing them,’’ she said. “That’s not going to be helpful.”

NYPD Vice Division Commanding Officer James Klein said the operation has already shut some brothels down.

“It’s a matter of building up trust with this population. There’s very little trust right now,’’ he said.