Eric Adams put nine lieutenants, 42 sergeants, and 176 police officers on Roosevelt Avenue to drive the sex traffickers out.
Now Zohran Mamdani runs New York City – and the johns are back.
A New York Post front-page investigation just exposed what Mamdani's first months in office did to prostitution in New York City.
The Operation Adams Built – and Mamdani Buried
Operation Restore Roosevelt was not a photo op.
Adams launched it in October 2024 with a specific, public promise: "We will end sex trafficking in this area."
By January 2025, the operation had delivered – 985 arrests, 11,831 summonses, and 18 vacate orders shutting down illegal brothels along the Jackson Heights and Corona corridor.
Crime across the Roosevelt Avenue stretch dropped 25 percent.
Mamdani took office and dismantled the enforcement posture behind every one of those results.
Prostitution-related arrests along Roosevelt Avenue this year through September 13: 193.
https://twitter.com/TexasTrump2024/status/2104521802923868611?s=20
During the same period last year under Adams and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch: 468.
A 59 percent collapse.
The street walkers have multiplied.
Storefront massage parlors running "happy ending" services operate out of sight of cops now hamstrung by permissive laws and a mayor who co-sponsored legislation to decriminalize the entire industry.
One 40-year-old john told the Post he had zero trouble scoring in broad daylight.
"I can get it done for $60 to $80," he said.
"Negotiating a tryst is super easy," he added.
He described the strip like a man reviewing a restaurant menu – prices, timeframes, room arrangements for different providers – on what the Post calls the "Market of Sweethearts," where the women are cheap, open to negotiation, and the police are nowhere to be found.
This Is Policy, Not Negligence
Mamdani did not stumble into this outcome.
He co-sponsored Cecilia's Act in the state Assembly – legislation to fully decriminalize adult sex work in New York.
He campaigned explicitly on reversing Adams' enforcement approach, praising former Mayor Bill de Blasio's strategy of deprioritizing prostitution arrests.
"What I want to do is look at the ways in which the previous administration addressed this issue," Mamdani said during the campaign. "I found that it created far more safety than what the current administration has done."
The previous administration he was praising was de Blasio's.
https://twitter.com/AinsworthKeith/status/2104361964432437717?s=20
The current administration he was attacking was Adams' – the one that produced nearly a thousand arrests and made Roosevelt Avenue safe enough for families again.
That crackdown is gone.
The state legislature's 2021 repeal of the loitering-for-prostitution statute had already hamstrung street enforcement before Mamdani arrived.
What Mamdani added was a mayor who views the resulting open-air sex market not as a crisis – but as a feature.
Roosevelt Avenue Has Seen This Before
This strip has been New York's ground zero for sex trafficking for decades.
In 2014, elected officials called Roosevelt Avenue a "mecca of human trafficking" – a hub where international gangs brought women from Mexico, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic and put them on the street.
Queens ranked first in prostitution arrests in the entire city.
Adams cleaned it up.
A mom named Gloria Contreras told reporters she could finally walk that corridor with her 9-year-old daughter because, for once, the police were there.
https://twitter.com/TheRealSantino/status/1970928946415010200?s=20
Mamdani reversed every inch of that progress – and the families on that strip are back to the same conversations with their kids.
When a mayor signals enforcement is finished, the market responds accordingly.
Roosevelt Avenue responded in about six months.
The women on those streets are not there by choice.
They are there because Zohran Mamdani decided his ideology mattered more than their safety – and more than the safety of every child and family living within two miles of what he calls progress.
Sources:
- Lowell Cauffiel, "Johns and Street Hookers Doing Robust Business in Mamdani's New York," Breitbart, September 27, 2026.
- "Mayor Adams Provides 90-Day Progress Update of Operation Restore Roosevelt," NYC Mayor's Office, January 22, 2025.
- Adam Lehodey, "Count on Mamdani to Decriminalize Prostitution," New York Post, 2025.
- Fred Lucas, "In NYC Mayor's Race, Adams Asks Mamdani 'Where in His Quran' Prostitution Is OK," Daily Signal, August 21, 2025.
- "Mamdani Surges Ahead in NYC Race, Promises to Dismantle Traditional Policing," Daily Signal, August 24, 2025.
- "New York City Launches Quality-of-Life Operation to Fight Sex Trafficking, Prostitution in Queens," ABC7/WABC, October 16, 2024.
- "Roosevelt Avenue Is 'Epicenter' of NYC Sex Trafficking, Officials Say," DNAinfo, July 18, 2014.