Figueroa: Gavin Newsom and Scott Wieners canyon of despair

Figueroa Corridor is one of California’s most notorious sex markets.Here, prostitutes gather, night after night, selling sex acts.Last year, members and associates of a gang were indicted after allegedly trafficking adults and minors — including foster children — along the corridor and branding them with tattoos.This was all the predictable result of public policy.

In 2022, Gov.Gavin Newsom signed a law decriminalizing loitering with intent to commit prostitution.

When he signed the bill, Newsom suggested it would help would reduce the harassment of women.We went to Figueroa to see the results for ourselves.As we walked the corridor, saw the sex market, and rode along with a former LAPD vice cop, one thing became clear: On Figueroa, human flesh is big business — something state leaders appear to have no desire to change.The scene stretches across almost 4 miles of hot, dusty cement.

Nearly nude women cluster at the start of side streets just off the main road.Lines of cars slowly cruise along, apparently hoping to buy.Pimps either oversee the prostitutes themselves, on a nearby phone, or through hired low-level watchers.

Sirens blare constantly, but officers often just roll on by.Stephany Powell, a former sergeant in an LAPD Vice unit and former executive director at Journey Out, a Los Angeles–based nonprofit serving human trafficking victims, rode with us along the corridor.“Statistically, the average age of entry for human sex trafficking is between the ages of 12 and 14 years old,” she said.

“We’d see 14-, 15-year-olds that were out on the prostitution tracks.We also would see 25-to-30-year-olds .

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some of them had been out on the streets on the prostitution tracks since age 13.And in those cases, nine times out of 10, they had a trafficker.”Figueroa has been a sex-trafficking den for decades.

But recent policy changes have made the corridor harder to police.In California, it had been a crime to loiter with the intent of committin...