prostitution reporting?

Posted By Tina Chen, 07/28/08 2:27 PM

so the other night, i see an older gentleman and a tranny prostitute walk by my house and into Brown's alley. since one of the windows from the house actually looks into the alley, i decided to see where they would go since the alley actually gets decent traffic at night....and basically, they walked about halfway down the alley and then proceed to climb into what I assume is an abandoned building.

and they did this with cars passing by them!

....so my question is, should i actually call 311 or 911 and report this? Will a police officer actually come out to "investigate"? Does anyone else have experience with reporting prositution-related activities??

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Comments

I'd suggest calling both. 911 right away to report the crime in progress, then 311 to report the open access to the vacant property being used for prostitution. And if you post the address here or on the MVSNA yahoo group, perhaps one of the on the ball Fenty reps Mark Bjorge or Abigail Peterson will look into it :) They are most helpful.

Posted By Si Kailian / At 7/28/08 3:17 PM

Where's Brown's Alley. Is it on 5th between L and M? Thanks!

Posted By tamden / At 7/28/08 4:05 PM

haha we bulldog'd 'em out of the west end of brown's alley. they're running out of spots. last year during Police Week it was really busy with the tranny he/she colored tv's. tina, sorry but i LOL after reading that. nice to know that somebody else see's this stuff going on and asks questions. brown's alley is they alley behind Yale Steam Laundry Condo's between 4th and fifth and runs north south next to YSL. it's named after Brown who was a notorious bootlegger that resided on the 400 block of M St. NW

Posted By richard rogers / At 7/28/08 4:31 PM

definitely call and report it! the police will pay attention to a problem if they get a TON of data points about a place. if you just ignore it, they'll never know they have a place they should be cracking down on.

Posted By IMGoph / At 7/28/08 4:32 PM

thanks all, will try to walk around brown's alley during the day and see if i can try and guess what abandoned building they crawled into...and will call police/311 next time. i'm just not sure when to call, because if i call too early, they might move to another location and if i call too late, they might have "finished the transaction" and gone their separate ways...

Posted By Tina Chen / At 7/28/08 6:57 PM

Well what the Mayor and City want you to do is call 911. Probably like myself you have been conditioned over your life to only call 911 in a emergency and don't feel right about calling 911 for disturbances and minor incidents. But the City must know better then the rest of Country in their infinite wisdom.

Posted By Dave / At 7/29/08 4:46 AM

report all suspicious activity to the police. i have, it's the only way to get rid of the crackheads and win.

Posted By richard rogers / At 7/29/08 6:12 AM

you can said a anonymous text message to the police. Send a text to 50411

http://mpdc.dc.gov/mpdc/cwp/view,a,1242,q,564693,mpdcNav_GID,1523,mpdcNav,%7C.asp

Posted By eddie / At 7/29/08 7:12 AM

Is the above correct that the alley is between 5th and 6th and L and M? We'll check it out today. Do you know which specific building is not secured? Email me at: Mark(dot)bjorge(at)dc(dot)gov

So far as the texting thing goes- that service is intended to be used when a phone call would be inappropriate. Please continue to call 911 for crimes in progress if it is safe for you to do so. From the MPD website:

Give 5-0 the 411 with the new Text Tip Line: 50411. Text messages are monitored by members of the department 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Tips are then analyzed and passed on to the appropriate unit or division for follow-up. Because the tip line is anonymous, the sender will not receive a response to the original message.

Neither of these anonymous tips lines is an emergency number. If you witness a crime in progress or have an emergency that requires the police, please call 911.

Posted By Mark Bjorge / At 7/31/08 9:17 AM