A Brooklyn pimp ordered a rival gunned down in a White Castle parking lot.
Federal prosecutors just buried him for fifty years.
But the street where he built his empire never stopped running.
The Penn Track Never Closed For Business
Omari Scott ran girls up and down Pennsylvania Avenue in East New York for years, in Hakeem Jeffries' own congressional district.
Prosecutors called him "Prince" and "Sir Prince." Neighbors called the pavement "the Penn Track" – a wide-open sex market operating in broad daylight blocks from family homes.
Scott didn't just sell women. He killed for market share. Court records show that when a rival pimp named Cleveland Clay tried to take one of Scott's victims, Scott recruited another trafficker, handed him a gun, and had Clay shot dead in a White Castle parking lot.
A federal jury convicted Scott in June of last year. In late July, Judge Kiyo Matsumoto handed him 50 years. Prosecutors said it may be the first case in the country where a trafficker was convicted at trial for murder committed in the course of sex trafficking.
Good. Lock him up and throw away the key.
Here's the problem – the New York Post went back to the Penn Track after Scott's sentencing. The girls are still there.
Same Corner, Same Price, Same Pimps
According to the Post, dozens of women are still working Pennsylvania Avenue for as little as $85 a visit, and conditions have gotten worse since Scott went to prison.
One trafficking victim testified she never touched the money she earned. It went straight to her pimps, who beat her if she came up short and controlled the hotels, the meals, the clothes, everything.
She testified she wasn't allowed to sleep until she hit quota. Rain, snow, didn't matter.
That's the system Scott ran. Prosecutors have proven it happened at a second location too – a pimp named Ferron Facey was separately charged with trafficking women, including a minor, at the same stretch of road. Another trafficker, Joel Forney, was charged doing the same thing months earlier.
One corner. Three federal trafficking cases. And that's just what NYPD caught.
The Politicians Who Represent This Street
This isn't happening on some anonymous stretch of interstate. It's happening in the district of the House Minority Leader.
NYPD has previously estimated as many as 350 pimps operate in the Penn Track area at any given time, running women through it, many against their will.
City Councilman Chris Banks – a Democrat who actually has to answer to residents – has begged NYPD for years to treat East New York like Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, where police finally flooded the zone with dozens of officers. He told the Post the department made "a lot of verbal commitments" and nothing showed up on the ground.
A women's advocate quoted by the Post said every prostitute working the Penn Track is being extorted by a pimp. Not some. Every one.
Jeffries isn't the only Democrat with this problem. Fox News reporting has tied the same open-air sex trade to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's district as well.
Two of the most powerful Democrats in the country. Two districts. Both home to a red-light zone that outlasted a murder conviction.
Jeffries didn't stumble into this. He built his career on shorter federal sentences and easier reentry after prison, co-authoring the First Step Act and pushing for years to roll back mandatory minimums.
Ask the woman who wasn't allowed to sleep until she hit quota how that's worked out for her.
Jeffries has plenty to say about chokeholds and stop-and-frisk. He hasn't said a word about the sex market running nonstop three blocks from his constituents' front doors.
The NYPD Response Says Everything
Ask NYPD what they're doing and they'll point to Scott's arrest and a promise to "continue to monitor" the area.
Monitor. Not shut down.
Roosevelt Avenue got more than 50 officers on the ground in a single night when the pressure came down. Penn Track got two cops in an unmarked car.
Residents are stuck shielding their kids' eyes walking to school past women in lingerie negotiating with strangers in idling cars. That's a City Council member's own description of his district, on the record.
You can put one trafficker away for the rest of his natural life and still lose if the market that created him is allowed to keep running the next morning. That's exactly what's happening on Pennsylvania Avenue right now.
The federal government did its job. Jeffries spent a career making it easier on men like Scott. He owes his constituents an answer for why that street is still open.
Sources:
- Kevin Corke, "Jesse Watters Primetime," Fox News, August 2026.
- New York Post staff, "Exploring Brooklyn's Penn Track sex trade," New York Post, August 2026.
- U.S. Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York, "Brooklyn Man Sentenced to 50 Years in Prison for Sex Trafficking and Murder in the Course of Sex Trafficking," Department of Justice, August 2026.
- Staff report, "Open-air sex market is exploding in Brooklyn as hookers openly sell themselves along the Penn Track," New York Post, November 2024.
- Staff report, "Council Member Banks: NYPD Not Doing Enough to Police Prostitution Along Penn Track," News 12 Brooklyn, November 2024.
- Hakeem Jeffries, "Criminal Justice," Official Website of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, accessed August 2026.
