OAKLAND — City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente had a simple message Wednesday afternoon for men who solicit prostitutes in Oakland.
“This is your last and final warning,” said De La Fuente, standing beneath a 10-foot-by-22-foot billboard on International Boulevard featuring the pictures of four men — obscured so they are not identifiable — arrested last month in a sting operation.
Although De La Fuente initially vowed to post the unaltered pictures of men arrested for solicitation in an attempt to shame other “johns,” he said concerns about the harm it could cause innocent family members prompted him to rethink his plan and delay it for several months.
Five billboards ask “How much clearer do we have to make it? Don’t ‘john’ in Oakland.”
The next round of billboards, donated by Clear Channel Communications, will feature unaltered pictures of men convicted of prostitution-related crimes, De La Fuente said.
“We are going to aggressively go after pimps and johns,” said De La Fuente, who is a candidate for mayor. “But at the same time, we’re reaching out to the underage women caught up in the trade and helping them get out of the life.”
The campaign — dubbed Operation Shame — includes posters at bus stations throughout Oakland, which include information on where
prostitutes can go for services.
De La Fuente and Councilmember Jean Quan said they are committed to reducing the number of 11- to 14-year-old girls working as prostitutes in Oakland. Authorities believe their ranks have increased tremendously in the past 18 months.
“When you are that young and have so few options, I don’t know that it’s really their choice,” Quan said, adding that Oakland has also become a hub for the international criminal sex trade.
De La Fuente said he was working with Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff to prosecute men arrested for prostitution-related crimes instead of allowing them to plead to lesser charges. The four men featured on the billboard, all arrested for solicitation, pleaded to disturbing the peace and paid a fine, De La Fuente said.
The crackdown on prostitution in the Fruitvale, which started in February, has already improved the community’s quality of life, said Robert Grove, a member of the Fruitvale’s Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council.
Not everyone was so complimentary.
Maxine Doogan, an Oakland resident and sex worker, brought her dog and signs denouncing De La Fuente and the campaign to Wednesday’s news conference, interrupting it once to taunt the council president about the recent arrest of his 32-year-old son on charges the younger man had raped two women.
Doogan accused De La Fuente of using the issue for political purposes and overemphasizing the problem of underage prostitution and sex trafficking.
The council is scheduled to consider a proposal from De La Fuente on Tuesday to reinvigorate and expand the city’s Beat Feet Ordinance, which now allows the police to seize the cars of people arrested for buying drugs, to include people arrested for pimping or pandering.
The amended ordinance would require the city to promptly hold a hearing to determine whether the seizure was proper, officials said.
In addition, five businesses along International Boulevard, which authorities say is dotted every night with prostitutes, have installed surveillance cameras in an attempt to curtail the thriving sex trade along the main commercial corridor in East Oakland and the Fruitvale.
E-mail Heather MacDonald at hmacdonald@angnewspapers.com.
