The Market of Sweethearts has nothing on Brooklyn’s seedy Penn Track.
East New York’s notorious open-air sex market has seen an explosion of scantily-clad prostitutes in the area near Pennsylvania Avenue, prompting a local pol to plead for cops to crack down as parents are forced to shield their children’s eyes and residents wake up to used condoms scattered across their condo parking lots.
“We need the same attention the police department is paying to Roosevelt Avenue, to bring it out to East New York . . . to help address the issue,” City Councilman Chris Banks told The Post.
The Post encountered nearly a dozen skimpily-dressed hookers Wednesday night, standing beside parked city Sanitation and semi-trailer trucks along Georgia and Malta Avenues, bringing sleazy drivers to a stop and even jamming up traffic as they chatted up potential johns.
“You’d like to hang out?” one prostitute, who wore black platform boots and a tiny skirt exposing most of her derriere, asked a Post reporter.
After offering sex for $120 or oral for $85, she advised, “I know a spot we can go,” before being turned down.
Another woman on the block promised a good time in the backseat of the scribe’s Chevy Malibu for $140.
“You don’t have tinted windows? We’re going to have to fishbowl it,” cooed the sex worker, who wore thigh-high boots along with a red-and-black leather jacket.
Longtime locals bemoaned brazen prostitutes hawking sex in broad daylight, less than four blocks from PS 306.
“Had there been an early response to this, it would’ve brought the activity down, [but] it’s been allowed to fester over the last couple years,” said a frustrated Banks, who supported the recently passed hotel licensing bill aimed at cracking down on “bad actors” profiting off the illicit sex trade.
Through Oct. 27, police have made 18 prostitution-related arrests along the Penn Track, including 12 for patronizing prostitutes, compared to 19 during the same period in 2023, with 16 johns being busted. During this time period in 2022, just four arrests were made in the area, all for prostitution.
Migrant women staying in nearby shelters are believed to be fueling the prostitution surge at Penn Track, historically the domain of young black sex workers, Banks and a women’s advocate said.
The prostitutes are being extorted by pimps, the advocate explained — some of whom have been busted for allegedly forcing girls as young as 16 to work the streets and gunning down rivals in flesh-peddling turf wars.
“It’s all pimp controlled,” said the advocate, who requested anonymity. “You can’t work independently there.”
City Hall and the NYPD have made “a lot of verbal commitments” to provide additional resources for tackling the prostitution in his district, but “we haven’t seen the boots on the ground,” Banks said.
An NYPD spokesperson said police have focused their patrol efforts in the Penn Track area and will continue to address the issue.
City Hall spokeswoman Kayla Mama said Mayor Adams “has made it clear that lawlessness, particularly the exploitation of women, will not be tolerated or ignored.”
While roughly 50-plus cops were seen patrolling Roosevelt Avenue on a Wednesday night two weeks ago, The Post observed only a pair of cops in an NYPD cruiser and in an unmarked car around the prostitution hub over the course of four hours Wednesday.
“Be careful,” two officers in the unmarked sedan warned a reporter they initially believed to be a john. “You don’t want to be in The Post.”