An undercover prostitution sting in Brampton saw seven men and three women arrested and charged this spring and Peel's vice unit officers promise there will be more to come.
Cars continue to drive through the eastern edge of Brampton's downtown core looking for the streetwalkers they know they will find there. It has been an ongoing problem for more than 10 years now.
Prostitution is legal in Canada, but solicitation in public is not. Peel police have been exercising their authority to seize the cars of johns they charge. The cars are held for bail hearings. To get them back, the registered owner— whether that is the man caught trying to buy sex or his wife, girlfriend, employer or mom—  has to go to court and convince a justice of the peace that the car won't be used the same way again.
All of the men recently arrested for trying to buy sex from streetwalkers are Brampton residents, according to Peel vice Const. Kristine Arnold. The johns start to circle the residential streets around 5 p.m. and they "do a figure eight" around June Street, Beech Street, through a nearby plaza and around again until they find someone.
Women in the area have complained to police that men looking to pay for sex have stopped them while walking their dogs.
When area residents gathered at Central Peel Secondary School last month for a meeting with police to discuss anything on their minds, the topic that kept cropping up was the prostitution problem, Arnold said.
"We want the residents in the area to know things are happening," she said, pointing to the sting done at the end of May. She promised there are more to come.
"It's ongoing," she said. "There will be more (stings) until it stops."
She admits eradicating prostitution in the area is a tall order.
Police could push out the approximately 30 prostitutes, but  officers realize they will just go somewhere else. If prostitution is the world's oldest profession, then trying to curb street prostitution is the second oldest. However, Arnold said she believes Peel's efforts have made a dent in the problem.
"We haven't seen the same men trolling the area," she said, confirming there were no repeat offenders arrested in the last sweep.
Residents who live in the area can help, too. If they are approached, they should get a licence plate number and call the vice unit. Arnold warned not to get into a confrontation, but to pass the information on to police, and they will take it from there.
Vice unit officers have been tackling the issue from different angles in recent years, looking for more permanent solutions. They say more than 95 per cent of the street prostitutes in Brampton are drug addicted.
Their efforts may be paying off. In the past two months, four prostitutes have left the streets and gotten help, Arnold said.
"We have directed them to people who have been able to help get them clean," she said. That's due in part  to the relationship that vice unit officers have built with the women through a new program called Project AVERT (Avoiding Victimization by Encouraging Reporting and Tracking).
"Once a month we make sure we make some sort of contact with them and we know they are safe," Arnold said of the program. "It's working really well. They are very, very receptive." Prostitution sweeps don't change that, either, she said.
"They don't hate us for it," Arnold said. "They have to make money and they're willing to do it any way they need to. They know that, when they are plying their trade, there's going to be consequences."