A crime-infested stretch of Jackson Heights — where hookers openly ply their trade and brazen shoplifters run amok — has gotten even worse since The Post blew the whistle nearly five months ago.
Roosevelt Avenue near 91st Street in Queens, which has been marred by an illegal open-air migrant market and dozens of sidewalk sex workers, now has twice as many hookers pacing the block, locals say.
Thieves have gotten so defiant that they now threaten to take revenge on merchants when they’re nabbed, locals said Sunday.
“It’s getting worse,” said Jesus Diaz, manager of Bravo Supermarket on Roosevelt Avenue. “It used to be when we catch them stealing, they’ saying, ‘Oh I’m sorry, please, I’ll never do it again.’
“Now, they’re getting angry. They’re trying to punch you, telling you, “You’re going to have a problem,’ telling you, ‘We’re coming back and you’re going to have some real trouble,’” Diaz said. “You call and tell the cops that you caught them stealing and that you’re holding them waiting for them and the cops, they don’t even want to come, they don’t want to arrest these people.”
Meanwhile, the “Market of Sweethearts” that has flourished on the block has doubled.
“Too many beautiful ladies standing outside my door,” a jewelry store owner in the neighborhood said. “I just asked them not to stand directly in front, and block the door. What can I do?
“Too much ladies in front of my door. This is not like before. Before it was very clean here.”
She added: “There is the brothel across the street and then the brothel behind us here. Everyone knows.”
The Post reported on the problematic block in April, when residents and storeowners alike complained about migrants ripping off their stores and then hawking the hot goods on the sidewalks outside.
Stolen goods ranging from power tools to mouthwash are available at a discount — with the retailers unable to do anything about it, they griped.
Meanwhile, sex workers cruise the block, approaching potential customers as they stroll by and hopping into make-shift brothels inside local apartments when they land a john.
In July, when The Post returned for a second look, merchants were fuming.
“The police do nothing — nothing!” a worker at a nearby cellphone store said then. “Drugs, prostitution, alcohol — it’s terrible.”
They were still up in arms on Sunday.
“People don’t want to come to the pharmacy because of the sidewalks here,” Mi Pharmacia pharmacist Jenny Lee said, pointing to the more than 50 illegal vendors set up along the block.
“The cops come, do sweeps. Two weeks ago, two Sundays ago, the police came, cleaned them out and no people were here the last Sunday. But look, today, all the people come.
“The number of prostitutes have doubled in the last two months,” Lee added. “They’re starting to act like they are part of the community now. We see them every day.”
One neighborhood resident who asked to be identified only as Bill said he’s given up hope that things will go back to normal along his slice of Jackson Heights.
“I gave up,” he said. “Look, this is it. They got it, better get used to it.
“We went to the precinct, and it’s not like the cops are not doing their jobs or they don’t give a s–t,” he added. “They’re outnumbered — really outnumbered.”
