Seconds later, she vanished into a car, just as two other women in tight jeans and thigh-high boots rounded the corner and stuck out their thumbs. Known as "The Strip," the five-block stretch of West Street leading from the city's manicured Church Circle has long been a hangout for prostitutes. But until recently, the ladies of the night only came out after dusk. In the past six months, West Street residents and merchants complain, some prostitutes have begun soliciting business in broad daylight.
They walk past tourists and business travelers leaving Loews Annapolis Hotel. They hang out at the phone booth on West Washington Street, or stand in the alleys between vacant stores. Crandall, who watches the action between pumping gas at the Exxon station at West Street and Lafayette Avenue, said he sees prostitutes "almost every day. At nightfall, the pace quickens as business people and tourists desert the blocks between West Washington and Monticello Avenue.
A half-dozen prostitutes have been spotted on some nights when the traffic thins out, residents say. Within five hours last Friday night, police arrested five women in the block of West Street. The women were charged with prostitution after they offered to perform oral sex in exchange for money, police said.
Police are stepping up their patrols of West Street in response to complaints from nearby residents and merchants, Officer Hickey said. He did not rule out the possibility of another undercover investigation and said the vice squad wants to "nip this thing in the bud. Residents of City Gate, an upscale town house complex behind the second block of West Street, were pleased to hear of the arrests. They complained that their quiet community has been troubled for months by prostitutes taking clients to parking lots there.
It wasn't hidden. Everyone knew what was going on," he said. A man who was washing his car in front of his City Gate home Tuesday afternoon said finding condoms became an irritating part of his life. Christa Kisser, another City Gate resident, said she was surprised to find so much prostitution in Annapolis, a peaceful town known for its historic charm.
