WARNING: This article contains graphic images of partial nudity.
It’s a normal evening in Northwest Dallas. Business owners close shop with their usual nightly rituals: bolting the front doors, turning cameras on, and locking the gates surrounding the parking lot.
Their drive home is nothing out of the ordinary. Traveling down Harry Hines Boulevard, business owners pass through endless crowds of nearly naked women swamping the streets, their pimps lurking in the shadows. At stop signs and traffic lights, women knock on car windows, touting what 15 minutes of a good time would cost.
In the morning, business owners arrive back to the same unpleasant scene as always. They collect used condoms and used tampons from their parking lot, remove sex toys from their flower pots and window sills, and pray that their customers aren’t deterred by the wave of beckoning women they must wade through on the sidewalks to get to the front doors.
Standstill traffic full of johns looking to pick up women around midnight. Faux police sirens in the street do not deter any of the buyers.
For local business owner Brandie Cox, this is a pattern she’s been experiencing for years. When she bought her business, it was supposed to be one of the best days of her life. What she didn’t know was that she would be thrown into spending the next two years fighting the sex trafficking epidemic that has ravaged Northwest Dallas.
“I come into work to [find] 15 to 20 used condoms in my parking lot,” said Cox, whose business is right off of Harry Hines. “They use my parking lot as a toilet.”
Harry Hines has long been notorious as a hub for sex trafficking in Dallas.
“I was a prosecutor for 33 years, and during my entire career, I always knew that Harry Hines was a red light district,” said Wendy Risinger, a retired prosecutor who has been hired by businesses in and around Harry Hines.
“I’ve been out there at night, and I’ve been out there in the daytime. It’s 24/7, every day of the week. What I saw was way beyond prostitution,” said Risinger. “It’s violent for the women who are in it. It’s violent for the people whose businesses are located there.”
Photo taken outside of Cox’s business front before 1 p.m.
Cox detailed times when her business’ Ring doorbell camera caught videos of pimps beating up women and dragging them down the street by their hair.
“Pimps will beat up women as other men watch,” Cox told The Dallas Express.
Like most other business owners in the area, Cox has been forced to install gates around her parking lot to clear a path for her clients. Despite the efforts, beckoning women will still gather around her front door during the daytime, ambushing her clients coming in and out of her building. Cox has even had to call the police and wait for them to arrive before letting any of her clients leave.
“The pimps are always watching, making sure the women make their quota for the day,” said Cox. “If [a woman] doesn’t make enough money, pimps may not let her eat or let her sleep inside that night.”
A pimp yells at his woman as she walks the street at night, trying to make money.
“It’s organized crime that’s running this,” said Risinger. “You can’t be a hooker anymore and not have a pimp. It’s not allowed in the business. If you don’t start out with one, you will quickly have one because you will get forced into it.”
In July of 2023, a serial killer was arrested for the murders of three sex workers who worked the streets of Harry Hines Boulevard, one of which Cox had spoken to outside of her business before her death. Oscar Sanchez Garcia, 25, was charged with three counts of murder between April and July.
Kimberly Robinson, 60, Cherish Gibson, 25, and Debrenese Janey Henry, 31, were found dead near the Trinity River in Oak Cliff, each of them stabbed and naked from the waist down.
Garcia attempted to murder another woman in the area, but she narrowly escaped. In an interview with Dallas Weekly, the woman, who went by ‘D,’ said she was working the streets along Harry Hines when Garcia allegedly picked her up around 6 a.m.
He asked D what her price was for 15 minutes.
“I said $120. He said that he only had $100. I was like, ‘Well you’re going to have to come back when you have the money,’ and he kept asking, ‘Please, please, please,'” D said. “He comes back, and I make him show me [that] he has the money.”
According to D, Garcia attempted to take her further away from Harry Hines, but D told him she was uncomfortable and asked him to stop in an alley near Cesar’s Tacos on Shady Trail. Garcia pulled over and attempted to knock D’s pepper spray out of her hand as they were having sex.
After they finished, Garcia climbed on top of D and held a knife to her neck, demanding that she return his money. When Garcia went to slash D, she jumped out of the car, narrowly escaping injury. Garcia attempted to run her over before driving off.
Cox shared a story with The Dallas Express in which a girl was raped so brutally at the nearby Walnut Inn motel that she was knocked unconscious and had to be taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
Every day, the girls working the street fill the parking lot of the Walnut Inn, waiting for men to pull in and choose which girl they would like to have sex with.
Occasionally, a police officer will park in the parking lot, and the activity will temporarily simmer.
“The second the cop drives away, they all come back out like roaches,” said Cox.
While Dallas police frequently patrol Harry Hines, they are limited in their ability to intervene.
In July of 2023, the City of Dallas overturned a prostitution ordinance that deemed “manifesting the purpose of engaging in prostitution” a misdemeanor that carried a fine of up to $500. Under the ordinance, police could issue a citation if a person is a known prostitute, beckons to others to engage in conversation, or attempts to stop a vehicle by waving or other gestures.
Dallas County Criminal Court of Appeals Judge Kristin Wade overturned the ordinance, finding that it was “seeking a shortcut that trespasses on the constitutional rights of Dallas citizens.”
Just two months later, the Dallas City Council amended the prostitution ordinance, as reported by The Dallas Express.
The new ordinance sets a number of specific requirements that must be met before police are able to issue a citation. The person must be a known prostitute or be in a location frequented by those who engage in prostitution and must either repeatedly attempt to engage people in conversation, repeatedly stop or attempt to stop vehicles by hailing or “any other bodily gesture,” or repeatedly interfere with “the free passage of other persons.” To interfere with the “free passage of other persons,” one must be impeding public property, such as a street or sidewalk.
A woman walks down the street, trying to pick up business for the day.
An officer may not make an arrest until he has given the person a chance to explain her actions.
The new prostitution ordinance makes it difficult for an officer to approach any of the women. Police must see someone engaging in these actions “repeatedly.” Therefore, pimps keep the trafficked women on a quick rotation throughout different cities.
“There are organized prostitution rings that are coming in from other cities out there,” said Risinger. “One week it’s Oklahoma girls, another week Houston, another week Miami. My guess is they rotate throughout the country because it’s a way to not get discovered by working too long in one area.”
By constantly staying on the move, pimps decrease the chances that law enforcement will start to recognize their faces and the women’s faces.
Police can try to cite suspected pimps on traffic laws, but many of those smaller charges result in a local misdemeanor that pimps escape by relocating to another city.
Additionally, the Dallas police shortage is also causing a serious strain on officers’ abilities to focus on the area. With only around 3,000 officers currently on the street, Dallas is short the 4,000 a prior City analysis determined was needed to adequately police the jurisdiction.
“The police have been very cooperative with us. It’s just a manpower situation,” said Risinger. “I think Chief Garcia has got to sit down and examine whether this has really morphed into something that’s bigger than what they can handle.”
In August 2023, a police officer was shot and carjacked while doing undercover surveillance near Harry Hines. A vehicle reportedly pulled up behind the officer, blocking him in. As the officer got out of his car, two suspects exited the vehicle behind him and began to shoot. One suspect got into the officer’s car and drove away.
“Officers don’t have enough resources. We are being destroyed by a lack of numbers,” said Cox. “Police need to ask for help. It’s an epidemic.”
“It’s taken two years of my life. It’s everyday fighting,” she told The Dallas Express. Cox and neighboring business owners have struggled to retain clientele in such a dangerous area.
Women who work the streets will use business windows as mirrors during business hours and throughout the night. Click here for the video. WARNING: Graphic partial nudity.
“They have customers showing up who are having to wade through prostitutes, and johns and pimps approaching the businesses,” said Risinger. “One of my clients set up barricades, and the client has a video of guys coming in and stealing all the barricades at night. We have a video of two pimps having a shootout in vehicles during the daytime. During the day, one business owner had a gun pointed at his face by a pimp. Another business owner had a knife put to him.”
Many businesses are being forced to sell their property but struggle to find buyers.
“It’s extremely costly for a business to pack up and leave,” said Risinger. “You’ve got some customers who will never come back, who will abandon you.”
Risinger and business owners have long tried to gain the Dallas City Council’s attention on this issue, but little progress has been made. Cox has made repeated attempts to speak with Council Member Omar Narvaez (District 6), whose district includes the Harry Hines Boulevard area, but has not had success.
As those impacted continue to ask for help, the trafficking in Northwest Dallas puts the community in danger. A new apartment complex off Harry Hines is reportedly home to many children. It’s not uncommon for the school bus that comes to the apartment building to drive past lines of nearly naked women, even in broad daylight.
No matter the time of day, women are all along the streets being controlled by their pimps.
In addition to more attention from the city council and increased resources and manpower for the Dallas Police Department, Risinger said trafficked women need more support in order to escape.
“If you can convince all the people who are victims in the trade to get out, you have to have assistance to help them get out. It’s not that easy. They can’t just leave,” said Risinger. “They have to have a place to live, a place for their children to go, a means of income,” all the things that pimps promise in order to rope the women back into trafficking.
“The pimps are going to find you unless you’re protected and put you back into submission,” said Risinger. “Oftentimes, the pimps will impregnate a woman so that she stays close and loyal to him.”
“There’s no champion for these women,” said Cox. “This city is a trafficker’s dream.”
The Dallas Express contacted Council Member Narvaez for comment but did not hear back by publication.