County attorney drops 36 from Bissonnet prostitution injunction
Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee — who was elected on a promise to transform the region’s approach to criminal justice — removed 36 suspected sex workers Thursday from a proposed injunction aimed at shutting down street trafficking on the Bissonnet Track, a notorious hub in Southwest Houston.
Menefee said suing these newly identified human trafficking victims was not a solution to curbing illegal activities in the neighborhood, and it only compounded the harm for vulnerable people. His office is also “taking a hard look” at dozens of others still named in the lawsuit, although some suspected pimps — both male and female — will remain for the time being as defendants. None of the removed defendants are believed to be traffickers, he said.
“One thing we do know is targeting sex workers, many of which have been confirmed to be victims of human trafficking, is not a sound approach to solving the issues that are faced on the Bissonnet Track,” he said.
He believes that in the case of a known hub for human trafficking, the government should prioritize ending these crimes while protecting victims.
“This lawsuit did not achieve
those goals,” he said. “It proved to be ineffective and the proposed injunction would likely create another layer of harm for victims”
In the 2018 lawsuit, announced to great fanfare by Menefee’s predecessor, Vince Ryan, Mayor Sylvester Turner and Police Chief Art Acevedo, officials sought to prevent 86 people accused of engaging in the sex trade from entering an “anti-prostitution zone.”
Compounded by pandemic
The sweeping injunction they envisioned never came to fruition. Only a handful of defendants made progress by presenting evidence the county should drop the charges or by agreeing to steer clear of criminal conduct within the few-block circuit.
Women in skimpy clothes still stroll the area, as evidenced during a Thursday afternoon visit by a Houston Chronicle photographer. When state Democratic Rep. Ann Johnson, a former prosecutor, visited a few months ago she said it was jaw dropping to her campaign staff who hadn’t seen such blatant prostitution before.
Acevedo said the situation has been compounded during the pandemic.
“The Bissonnet corridor is an absolute … it’s just a black eye that we all share collectively as a community in a world where you know COVID and everything else is there,” Acevedo said.
“It’s clear we have to modify our approach,” Johnson said.
The ACLU of Texas has argued the proposed injunction is far too broad and would sweep up conduct by the defendants that is not in any way illegal, like standing at a bus stop or making calls on a cellphone.
“Civil injunctions shouldn’t be used as a tool for policing or a way to criminalize someone’s very existence,” said Brian Klosterboer, a staff attorney at the ACLU who brought a challenge in the Bissonnet lawsuit. “The injunction sought in this case was unconstitutional and far too broad, and sought to drive people further into the shadows.”
Experts in human trafficking said it was unnecessarily punitive to target people who’d been victimized for years and often were compelled by pimps to sell other victims.
Johnson, the newly elected lawmaker who also founded the Harris County District Attorney Office’s human trafficking program, followed the Bissonnet case closely and testified as an expert for one of the Jane Does sued.
She thinks the county’s lawsuit sent a contradictory message, namely, “That those who were being exploited were somehow part of the problem rather than the focus of our protection.”
The former county attorney’s unusual strategy jointly with the state of Texas was to seek civil penalties to prevent pimps and johns from perpetuating the cycle and deter prostitutes who had been arrested repeatedly from flagging down cars and loitering in doorways and outside shops.
Ryan, a three-term incumbent who pursued an array of nuisance injunctions against illegal gambling parlors and kush vendors, lost in a March primary to the 32year-old progressive litigator. Menefee went on to defeat Republican John Nation by more than 141,000 votes.
Ryan said Thursday he thought the injunction was the right move to address a glaring problem for the local management district his office represented by bringing a lot of attention to it.
“It’s always easy to look backwards and say we coulda, shoulda,” he said. But in time, he came to believe that the real problem was the pimps and it didn’t make sense to punish the people being sold. He said he spoke briefly with Menefee about the policy shift and he supported the new thinking.
“It’s a different time now than it was then,” he said.
Case review continues
Menefee said his staff is not done examining the rare court filing that asks for a blocked-off zone for certain conduct.
“I’m 27 days in on the job; we’re still assessing the effectiveness and the legality of it,” he said.
He said he felt sure that “going after the sex workers who are victim is not the right path.”
He emphasized that his office is “sensitive to the concerns of families living near the area” and he plans to seek partnerships with community groups and government agencies aimed at solutions to human trafficking.
Precinct 1 Constable Alan Rosen, whose office runs a widely attended recovery group for people involved in trafficking, also thinks the new approach makes sense.
“We wholehearted applaud any action that treats sex workers like the survivors they so often are,” Rosen said.
The pathway forward is not clear for the 36 defendants removed by Menefee’s office. They were nonsuited — meaning his office is no longer suing them — and several defendants from the initial filing were also nonsuited by Ryan. However, these individuals are not yet dismissed from the case, because a neighborhood group, the Sugar Branch Condominium Association, entered into the litigation as an intervenor plaintiff.