Support North Seattle's Fight Against Sex Trafficking

Thanks to misguided changes to federal laws, as well as the knee-jerk removal of the Prostitution Loitering statute, Aurora Avenue has become the sex tourism capital of the West Coast.

We've seen victims as young as 11 on our corners, often trafficked from other regions in Washington, as well as Oregon and California. These individuals have pimps, who have claimed our neighborhood as their turf, battling each other for territory. They fire automatic weapons at each other from their vehicles, terrifying the families that call these streets home.

We have the bullet holes in our homes to prove it.

This website is a tool for our North Seattle neighborhoods to fight back.

Using multiple plate reader cameras strategically placed in residential areas off of Aurora Ave, we developed a system and algorithm that identifies potential Johns while preserving the privacy of our neighbors. If the system captures a suspicious plate, it is loaded into the website and is searchable. If a plate is found via search, each date, time and photo of that plate is displayed. Anyone can search for a license plate and view the results.

To have your plate removed, you can make a donation to a local sex trafficking survivor support group and show your receipt for removal. To date, we have over 30,000 plates searches, 7,000 captures from nearly 5,000 suspicious vehicles, and have confirmed over $11,000 in donations.

The website itself does not make any money. All of the cameras, along with recurring software and hosting costs are shouldered by a handful of people. It gets expensive.

This website doesn't work if there is no exposure. Suspicious wives, coworkers and friends of the Johns that fuel this devastating industry need to know this website exists. Besides a few news reports upon launch, the majority of visitors to the website are word of mouth, or from signs placed in residential areas with QR codes. We can do better.

Any money donated will be used for signage, including large, visible signs with QR codes that serve as fair warning to Johns entering our neighborhoods. These need to be replaced often as pimps and activists tear them down. We're also raising money for even wider coverage and exposure, including adding new license plate reader cameras, purchasing billboards or other creative guerilla advertising, and media spots.

We also want to blanket social media such as creating ads to be served along with YouTube and Instagram videos showing the women on Aurora. These videos have millions of views, glorifying the sex trafficking trade fueling the demand. They often contain dashcam footage of our residential neighborhoods. This serves as instructional video for Johns and free advertising for pimps.

WE CAN'T CONTINUE THIS EFFORT WITHOUT YOUR HELP

We need to devalue our residential neighborhoods to the pimps that bring sex trafficking victims into it. The more eyes on the website, the fewer Johns lurking our streets. Decrease the demand and we'll decrease the trafficking and the gun violence that comes with it.