Surveillance and Sex Work on Shotwell
Residents of the Mission have erupted over alleged sex work on Shotwell.
Recent complaints about sex work in the Mission made the news this August. But the issue is more nuanced than previously reported.
In 2024, Mission residents brought a lawsuit against the City and County of San Francisco, accusing them of not doing enough to deter sex work and potential sex trafficking. The City installed bollards and other traffic-related hardware, including cameras, to limited effect. Since then, residents dropped their suit but still say they’re struggling.
The history of sex work in San Francisco is convoluted. It’s a hot topic, and understandably so. Sex work has undeniably shaped the City, from street names to journalism. From the heights of the Gold Rush to the desperation of sex trafficking in the 1850s, the brothel industry really got its start when excess cash and extreme wealth disparity drove the early City economy.
As time went on, things settled a bit, but the temperance movement shook it all up again. San Francisco was the stage for the first sex worker-led protest in 1917, when 300 Black and white sex workers marched together against a preacher who was largely responsible for shutting down brothels and further endangering impoverished women.
Throughout the 20th century, there were these sudden jolts one way or another when it came to decriminalization and enforcement of anti-prostitution laws. In the 1990s San Francisco even started a trend of “John School” where adult men caught soliciting were purportedly given the tools to reduce recidivism and change their ways, a concept copied across the nation.
A task force assembled in the mid-1990s created a recommendations report that reads almost like it was published yesterday. This line sounds familiar: “It is no coincidence that the rise in enforcement and prosecution of soliciting crimes comes at the same time that the City budget for social services has been cut more drastically than at any time in the City’s history. Unfortunately the rise in enforcement also seems to coincide with rising complaints against police officers of brutality and deprivation of civil rights.” In fact, the report includes under its recommendations a recognition of a common thread in enforcement: fear. And not just a normal fear of punishment or jail. This fear is rooted in the reality that enforcement often harms the already-marginalized.
Today’s sex workers might shudder at the similarities; according to the report, “Testimony regarding immigrants, African American and transgender women show that they are singled out for arrest, as well as abuse, including numerous reports of racist and homophobic verbal harassment [from police].”
Now there’s an added layer to the conversation because the surveillance tools deployed on Shotwell were live action cameras, and the pilot for running them resulted in just 57 letters to Johns. The City discontinued the pilot program, which has not yet had a formal audit. Disgruntled residents are now asking the City to instead invest in license plate surveillance, the very same that produce data the SFPD and Oakland have been sharing with ICE.
It remains to be seen what exactly will happen on Shotwell and Capp, but so far the sex workers reported to the Chronicle that ““Honestly [the street barricades are] probably just f—ing up the morning commute more than it is affecting our business.”
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