We're 'anti-bullets coming through our apartments,'" said Ira. KPIX 5 spoke with him and several neighbors.
"Really, what our concerns are, are the johns and the pimps," said Tom Madonna, a manager at Shotwell's Bar.
People who live and work there say the violence is out of control. It's not just sex workers whose lives are in danger on Shotwell St. "If you are a street-based sex worker, it's much harder to negotiate your rates, to negotiate safer sex condom use, to make sure that this person who is picking you up in a car doesn't have a knife or a gun," she said. Long estimates the number of street-based sex workers has tripled.
James is a peer-based occupational health and safety clinic for sex workers. "It has suddenly re-empowered this whole underclass of pimps and exploiters," said Pike Long, deputy director of St.