When Mayor Bill de Blasio talked about New York City “reopening” after the pandemic lockdowns, I don’t think this is quite what he had in mind. While many businesses in Gotham are still struggling to find enough workers to bring their operations back to pre-pandemic levels, prostitution on the streets of the Big Apple bounced back well before the mask mandates were lifted. And thanks to a variety of factors, the street trade appears to have significantly increased in volume, according to the New York Post. There’s one stretch in Brooklyn that’s openly referred to as an “open-air prostitution market” that runs all night long. Despite the horrible weather the city has endured over the past few days, the ladies of the evening were out in force this weekend. And the NYPD didn’t seem to be doing a thing about it.

Brooklyn’s open-air prostitution market was up and running over the weekend — with the only deterrence some thunderstorms the blew through Saturday into early Sunday as law enforcement continued to largely sit back and observe the brazen enterprise…

Though the number of women working the stretch — and johns seeking their services — appeared down following last week’s front-page Post exposé, those who continued to take to the streets encountered little new in the way of law-enforcement pushback.

The lone marked NYPD vehicle seen in the area — the exact location of which is being withheld to protect the women involved — across more than two hours early Sunday left around the time the storm blew over.

The descriptions of the police activity around the “market” are certainly curious at first glance. Most of the time, while lines of Johns were waiting for the prostitutes to approach them, if there were any police cars in the area they appeared to simply sit there and watch. On one occasion, a cop was heard yelling over the squad car’s loudspeaker for one of the women to “move along,” but she appeared to simply ignore him. The cop car later pulled away without having confronted anyone.

We won’t veer off into the territory of asking whether or not everyone was wearing masks since it’s pretty much pointless. But it’s worth wondering why the police seem to be playing hall monitor rather than shutting down this sexual marketplace. Even if they don’t want to go after the working girls, couldn’t they at least question the pimps or the customers?

Apparently not. Some police spoke to the Post on background and said that there’s no incentive to try to make any arrests because Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez has been backing off on prosecuting such cases. Why spend the time to make the bust and fill out all of the paperwork if the suspect is just going to be released without a trial date anyway?

The other factor comes from the state level. New York recently repealed its law against Loitering for the Purposes of Prostitution. If you can’t arrest either the hookers or the Johns under a loitering charge, you basically have to catch them in the act of “completing the transaction.” And for a crime that’s been largely decriminalized, is it really worth the time of the police?

This is one of those areas where my libertarian leanings put me in a different camp than many conservatives. While human trafficking, particularly with underage girls needs to be stamped out and the perpetrators imprisoned, what an adult woman does with her body in that regard is pretty much her business. I can’t imagine it’s a very appealing career choice, but it’s still the world’s oldest profession. There are thousands of gangbangers with illegal guns on the streets of New York causing all manner of mayhem. Perhaps harassing the hookers isn’t the best use of the NYPD’s time anyway.