Lawmaker wants ban on "brothel" biz cards

CORONA, Queens

They want the trading-card like ads featuring half-naked women banned.

"We should throw them in the garbage because they're not appropriate for kids," Tristan Mulvihill said.

Tristan Mulvihill is talking about /*Chica Chica cards*/ featuring scantily clad women in provocative positions.

There's a phone number and a promise to deliver the lady to your home.

Children can easily find them on Roosevelt Avenue in /*Corona*/, /*Queens*/.

Nuala Odoherty's kids have also come across the cards on the way to school.

"They pick them up, they giggle, I try to take them away from them, but they stuff them in their pockets," Odoherty said.

Even a child can figure out what's behind these cards, which are handed out in the cover of darkness along a more than 40 block stretch of /*Roosevelt Avenue*/.

One quick phone call to the number on the card and a dispatcher says for $35 a girl will come to the address we gave them for 15 minutes.

"We need to declare war on these criminals," /*Senator Jose Peralta*/, (D) Queens, said.

Senator Jose Peralta says they are criminals who are operating a thriving local sex trade, many times using girls as young as 14.

Peralta is proposing legislation that would ban the distribution of what he calls brothel business cards.

The bill would add teeth to existing laws that target those handing out lewd material.

"We need to get these people off the streets, the idea is to clean up Roosevelt Avenue, sort of tagging it to become the new Times Square," Sen. Peralta said.

Under the proposed bill those caught handing out these cards, could be hit with a $1,000 fine or face up to a year in jail.

But the district attorney has already gone on record expressing his concerns, pointing to the first amendment.

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