South Bronx School Surrounded By Prostitutes

nytimes.com:

When Nicole Murray's 10-year-old daughter, Diamond, first started going to West Farms elementary school three years ago, she asked her mother why one woman they passed was barely dressed.

At all hours of the day, prostitutes roam the streets around the school, waiting for cars entering and leaving the Cross Bronx Expressway. They bend over car windows and climb inside, in plain view of students walking to and from the school.

Read the whole story: nytimes.com

Comments

[Godheard SentU]

12:33 AM on 01/09/2011

The parents may want to remind the schools and police:
1) children have a legal obligation to attend school, therefore is it not a choice, and local education authorities will prosecute children and parents for non-attendance;
2) if the crimes and or bullying takes place on the way to or from school the school has a moral and ethical obligation for duty of care if its pupils are exposed to crime, attacked by fellow pupils or pupils from neighbouring schools;
3) children are obliged to wear school uniform throughout the day including the journey to and from school; if the school insists on school uniform, and especially if the bullies are wearing school uniform, then the school must accept responsibility for the actions of pupils they force to wear school uniform.
It is morally and ethically unacceptable for a school to be able to take disciplinary and legal action against a child and the child's parents for non-attendance and against the child for not wearing the "correct" uniform but simultaneously to be able to abdicate and deny responsibility for the safety of the child whilst the child is meeting that disciplinary and legal imposition.

http://www.bullyonline.org/schoolbully/faq.htm

[Manhattanite]

06:44 PM on 01/07/2011

Yeah, well, when I lived in the East Village in the early to mid-80's, in my impecunious grad student days, I was confronted at all hours with assemblies of prostitutes, pimps, crack-sellers, and the rest of their ilk. One drug dealer lived in our building. We finally got her out by petitioning the landlord to go to court. Point is that none of these people ever tried to harm us, tenants, and that we eventually got rid of them. It's not because you're surrounded with illegal drugs/prostitution that you'll become a drug addict/prostitute.

[Tewhiti]

10:24 PM on 01/06/2011

So what? It's their body, and they can use it how they choose.

[LoveWillTearUsApart]

04:29 PM on 01/26/2011

You're taking that thought way too far for this situation.lol

[akuamens]

06:15 PM on 01/06/2011

this is so unbelievable! How can some prostitutes lose manners, and respect for the kids around? It would be better if they took their job some where else.

[Bronxdude]

03:22 PM on 01/06/2011

That's how we do it in the Da Bronx!

[bbbbmer]

11:07 PM on 01/05/2011

Probably subsidizing the nearby charter schools...

[genrel1248]

10:24 PM on 01/05/2011

Must be a magnet school!

[condor101]

09:36 PM on 01/05/2011

I know a very wealthy guy who rents an apt for his 'girlfriend' and pays her a monthly salary. She's very hot and costs him about 150K a year. He sees her a couple a times a week and gets his pleasure.
For a middle class guy, the other option is to get on a plane to asia or south america where the women are hot and plentiful.
This is the best defense against ridiculous prostitution laws in this country.

[escobar]

09:13 PM on 01/05/2011

Where there are hookers there is heroin.

[Rod DK]

06:47 AM on 01/06/2011

Now how would you know that?

[MrUnlimited]

08:45 PM on 01/06/2011

Where there is Huffpost there is an illogical conclusion.

[ConfuciusSay-]

07:48 AM on 02/08/2011

Well done!

[malander]

07:00 PM on 01/05/2011

I remember the hookers in NYC back in the early 60's. My dad would take me into the city to his work, when we walked to lunch the prostitutes used to jokingly hit on me, I was 10...

[Venicelady]

05:59 PM on 01/05/2011

Hey, this is in the neighborhood where I teach in the Bronx.

Guess the hookers are moving up from Hunts Point.

Can't wait for our new Chancellor to come visit the neighborhood soon - shoud be a very interesting visit......

[dropthedh]

04:25 PM on 01/05/2011

Is the school under siege? At least that's what the headline suggests.

[Venicelady]

06:01 PM on 01/05/2011

This is nothing new- these ladies of the evening have been plying their trade forever around here....

[Nokilissa]

03:55 PM on 01/05/2011

Utterly heart-wrenching. For the kids, the teachers, the parents AND the prostitutes. I would think that having honest and developmentally appropriate communication with the kids about this could actually help. Maybe they could talk about the damage and pain that drugs can (and do) inflict and that many people get caught in circumstances they find very hard to change etc. but that life CAN change. They could even collect ideas for how to help? They could possibly have an officer come to talk with the older kids about efforts to help and why it's so hard to "clean it up". These kids aren't stupid. Rather than making it simply an awful environmental problem they have to deal with, they could use it as an instructive and compassion-invoking situation.

[eric14]

08:12 PM on 01/05/2011

Compassion is a means to end not an end in itself. So you invoke compassion, then what?

[Nokilissa]

05:04 PM on 01/06/2011

Is it? I disagree to the bone. Having compassion, the state of being compassionate, can absolutely be an end in itself. Of COURSE should that state of compassion manage to compel the self to be moved to act by it, AND to have the power to change the state of that person for whom one feels the compassion...all the better. But to have these children feeling compassionate, understanding and educated is, imo, a far better thing than to have them feeling scared, impoverished, and forgotten by a police force and community who can't or won't do anything for them or their school.

[mwsomerset]

03:30 PM on 01/05/2011

If the school, parents and law enforcement wanted to get rid of the problem they could..how about busting up the boulder for starters and keeping a patrolman on the street at the school 24/7....that were deter them. Sting operations would work as well....arrest the women for soliciting...and the men who are doing to soliciting...

[Mik McAllister]

03:55 PM on 01/05/2011

Or the city could hire them all as undercover security officers.

[Nokilissa]

03:56 PM on 01/05/2011

My hope would be to start with the pimps and the Johns, not the women who are routinely arrested and sent back out to do the bidding of the men who exploit them.

[democles]

03:18 PM on 01/05/2011

Meanwhile Bllomberg gives out more traffic tickets than ever.