D.C. Council targets cars used in prostitution

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The D.C. Council is considering legislation that would allow police to impound vehicles that they think have been used in prostitution.

In addition, the council is mulling a bill that would criminalize the act of prostitution and allow the police chief to declare "prostitution-free zones." Currently, only solicitation for prostitution is a criminal act in the District.

"Prostitution is something we've been dealing with for quite a while," Metropolitan Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey said. "This is just one more attempt at trying to put something in place that will give us an added tool."

In the early 1990s, areas surrounding Franklin Square and Logan Circle in Northwest were prostitution hot spots. Efforts led by council member Jack Evans, Ward 2 Democrat, helped drive those streetwalkers out of his ward and into other jurisdictions outside the District, he said.

Although prostitution remains a nuisance in the Logan Circle area, it is largely confined to certain blocks of Rhode Island and New York avenues in Northeast, where prostitutes tend to work for drug money, officials said.

Under the new legislation, police would be permitted to tow and impound any vehicle found parked outside a brothel or used in any capacity giving police "probable cause." The owner would be forced to pay a fine of $150 plus towing costs to get the vehicle back. It would not allow police to keep the vehicles or sell them at auction.

"At the end of the day, it means that if someone is using their car to procure prostitution services, that car gets taken," said U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Kenneth L. Wainstein. "And for one thing, that person is going to have some explaining to do."

The bill is scheduled for review by the D.C. Council's Judiciary Committee on March 14.

Also scheduled for a March 14 review is the Omnibus Public Safety Act, a hefty 22-title crime bill sponsored by D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams that includes language that would criminalize the act of prostitution.

Under current D.C. law, only the offer to buy or sell sex -- not the act itself -- is illegal.