How a Met Police crackdown left sex workers fearing for their lives

Maria has been tirelessly working the streets of Enfield as a sex worker on and off for seven years after escaping Romania to try and make a better life for her family back home. 

‘Many women like me do this work because we have no other way to survive,’ Maria, 27, tells Metro. ‘Some of us have children. Many of us have left bad or violent relationships. We are all just trying to live.’

While she used to work on well-lit, populated streets and car parks, for over a year, Maria has been forced to work alone on desolated streets, parks, and in dark corners – all in a bid, she says, to get away from the watchful eyes of police.

The shift came about due to a Metropolitan Police initiative called ‘Operation Pisces’, which was introduced with Enfield Council in June 2024 to tackle organised crime and antisocial behaviour. 

However, according to Maria and other sex workers in the area, it only put them more at risk.

‘Things got so much worse for us,’ she explains. ‘Police were – and still are – everywhere. They tell us to move all the time. They shout and threaten us with arrest, so we retreat to quiet places, which is very dangerous.’

Lasting until December 2025, Operation Pisces was ‘a clear phase’ within a three-stage Home Office policy called Clear, Hold, Build – an ‘academic, evidence-based approach that seeks to address serious and organised crime, and more broadly improve an area over a long, extended period of time,’  Chief Inspector Rob Gibbs Chief from the Metropolitan Police, tells Metro.

‘This part of London [Enfield] has a lot of challenges in it – the organised element is around drugs and gangs and violence,’ he adds. ‘We are trying to break the cycle around that. The volume of women who have been exploited there is large.’

However, Niki Adams of the English Collective of Prostitutes says that as far as she’s concerned Operation Pisces was effectively a ‘police crackdown against street sex workers in Enfield’s long-established red-light area.’

Although the scheme officially ended in Enfield nearly four months ago, Niki says it’s impact will be ‘long-lasting’.

She tells Metro that she first started receiving phone calls from ‘distressed’ women sex workers asking for her help in January 2025. ‘The policing approach involved heavy patrols and the issuing of ASBOs (Antisocial Behaviour Orders), loitering notices, and cautions,’ says Niki.  (The Met insist no ASBOs, Criminal Behaviour Orders or loitering notices have been issued to sex workers in the area.)

As a result, many of the women were forced to disperse to isolated areas, ‘simply to try and earn enough money to survive.’

Dr Binta Sultan, Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Inclusion Health at UCL, has been doing outreach work with sex workers in Enfield and says that prior to the initiative, police ‘worked well’ with sex workers. 

‘They took a collaborative approach with outreach services, were more trauma-informed, and treated women who were sex-working as victims of crime,’ she tells Metro. ‘They built trust.’

However, that changed with Operation Pisces, says Dr Sultan. ‘Women started telling us about their interactions with police – that they were being quite aggressive and rude, and that sex workers were being arrested. We also noticed women disclosing quite serious assaults from clients, but weren’t wanting to go to the police.’

They also noted a drop in women using outreach services because ‘police were located in those areas’ which made them afraid of being identified, arrested, or interrogated – or having their children taken away by social services. 

The impact on sex workers has been ‘devastating,’ says Niki.

‘Women say they feel hunted, persecuted and fearful. Many are survivors of rape and other violence and domestic abuse; being shouted at and threatened by police is very distressing and retraumatising.

‘Why aren’t the police and council asking what support women, and particularly mothers, need to survive instead of persecuting and criminalising them?’ she asks. ‘The impact of a criminal record is lifelong. We see women barred from other jobs, from housing, and even losing custody of their children just because they have a prostitute’s caution or conviction.’

For migrant women like Maria, their increased vulnerabilities also open them up to even greater violence from clients.

‘‘Now we are also afraid of the police,’ she says. ‘We aren’t dangerous people. We are just women trying to survive and support our families. We need safety, not punishment.’

Sarah is the mother of two young children and has lived and worked in Enfield for three years. Like many sex workers around her, she’s had to find ways to support her family in ‘very difficult times.’

‘I started doing street work after losing my job in a shop,’ the 39-year-old tells Metro. ‘I didn’t choose this job because it was easy. I chose this job to make sure my kids are okay.’

Prior to Operation Pisces, Sarah was ‘okay with local police.’ 

‘They knew who I was, and we all knew them,’ she says. ‘It meant we could work in areas where we could look out for each other. But everything changed and the police are everywhere.’

Fearful of being caught, Sarah says she has to ‘rush things with men and move quickly,’ which ‘increases the risk of violence.’

‘Being treated aggressively by the police just causes more stress and fear to our lives,’ she says. ‘We’re not the problem. We are just trying to get by.’

Dr Sultan claims that when she formally raised her concerns with the police, she was told: ‘that’s not what we do.’

‘They said they are here to protect women, and were focused on exiting sex work as their approach,’ she adds. ‘Every time we have raised it, they say they don’t arrest women. That they don’t criminalise sex work. They say they are taking a trauma-informed approach.’ 

CI Gibbs says that over the course of 18 months, they made 1,027 arrests as part of Clear, Hold, Build, and of those, 21 were arrests of sex workers. 

‘But we’ve not arrested anyone for loitering,’ he insists. ‘The most up to date term for ASBO is Criminal Behaviour Order (CBO), and through this work, we have not used that on any of the women. The women that have been arrested have been for minor or low-level criminal offences.’

Since Operation Pisces was put into place, CI Gibbs says the police has already seen ‘falling crime and antisocial behaviour’ in the area due to Home Office strategy. However, he also admits that it has led to sex workers becoming ‘less visible than they were’ – but that this was an ‘unintended consequence’.

Niki”s response to the success? ‘It has been horrifying to hear the police boast about how they have cleaned up an area when it is women’s safety, health and wellbeing which has suffered as a result.’ 

Dr Sultan adds: ‘Operation Pisces has been used as an example of good practice of policing sex work. We have serious concerns about this model being rolled out in other parts of London and the country, given the devastation it has caused.’

Meanwhile, Niki is calling on the Met to immediately start prioritising women’s safety, health and survival. 

‘After the murders in Ipswich in 2006 (when five sex workers were murdered), agencies came together to provide emergency support that enabled women to come off the street quickly,’Niki explains.

‘They had a dedicated phone line, gave women cash payments so they didn’t have to work to eat, they helped women clear their debts, provided housing and even helped some women get essential dental treatment. There is no reason that this kind of support can’t be available in Enfield.’

CI Gibbs points out that he has a ‘growing amount of intelligence’ that sex-working women are now approaching police officers for help. ‘In the past six months, 20 women have approached my teams asking for support,’ he says. ‘They feel trapped. We’re trying not to criminalise – there’s not a lot of point in criminalising a person who is just trying to survive. It doesn’t break the cycle.’

When criminal justice among sex workers ‘is necessary,’ Gibbs says his team are trying to ‘make the right referrals’ and have all the ‘support and safeguarding’ they need.

As a long-term solution, the English Collective of Prostitutes is campaigning for the loitering and soliciting laws and for prostitute’s cautions to be scrapped as part of legislation that decriminalises sex work. 

‘This would allow women to move off the street if they wanted and work together with others inside in much safer conditions,’ explains Niki. ‘But if this punitive policing devastating women’s lives continues, violent criminals will be given a green light to act violently towards them.

‘That does not equal safer streets.’

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