Shortly after Edward Pollard was elected to the Houston City Council in 2020, he got a letter from a third-grader pleading with him to do something about the bad guys who hang around the Bissonnet Corridor near Best Elementary School.
It took three years of trial and error to find a solution that worked: cutting off access and mounting cameras to send a message to drug dealers and human traffickers that Houston’s District J — or “J City” as Pollard calls it — is closed to crime.
Call it creative, unconventional or even radical, but it’s working, says Pollard, who grew up in Meyerland, blocks away from the area that’s been plagued with negative publicity and criminal activity for at least 20 years.
Pollard said the child’s letter “basically stated that when she goes to and from school, she sees prostitutes everywhere.” She asked the council member if he knew about the activity and if he cared.
“When you get a letter like that from a third-grader, it makes you want to do something,” Pollard said. “You cannot sit by and act like you don’t understand the circumstances and the experiences that they’re living through.”
About three years ago, a Houston cop suggested placing temporary barricades on side streets to restrict access between the Bissonnet Track and hourly motels. The movable barriers were monitored by law enforcement officers in their patrol cars at a cost of about $60,000 in overtime pay.
“We found that if we cut off the side streets where people were soliciting sex or buying drugs, they don’t have anywhere to turn off at night,” Pollard said. “We’re also able to dictate traffic patterns that way. In certain areas, there’s only one way in and one way out. It makes it very difficult for people to hide.”
“When you close up a business, you have no more customers,” he added. “We basically closed off the streets, which were a business for people to buy sex and drugs.”
But what about emergency vehicle access and people who need to use the side streets to get home at night? Pollard says he thought of that and met with police and fire officials, business owners and HOA representatives. Alief ISD got involved and did a student cleanup project on the corridor. Everyone he talked to was supportive. “Everybody signed off on it,” he said.
“I’m shocked that we’re able to do it, honestly,” he said. “I think we’re probably the only area in the country that closes public streets as a strategy. We tried all types of things but this is something that worked. It was one of Houston’s most notorious streets but it was also internationally known as a hub for prostitution and trafficking. We wanted to shut that down.”
The COVID-era funding for police overtime ran out, so Pollard and his collaborators got creative again. Now the barricades are permanent with gates that are closed and locked from 10 p.m. until 5 a.m., seven days a week.
Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones’ office designed, constructed and paid for the fixed barriers at Bissonnet at Centre Parkway, Sugar Branch Drive at Centre Parkway, Centre Parkway at US-69, Plainfield Street at US-69, Alberene Drive at US-69, and Plainfield Street at Bissonnet.
Briones said when the gates were unveiled in 2024 that the Bissonnet Track’s proximity to schools prompted her team to take swift action.
“Think of the number of students who walk to school every day and who might be at risk of being recruited and end up being trafficked,” she said. “This is a danger that all of our children could face, whether they live in this area or other areas. We know, unfortunately, that this Bissonnet Track is one of the hotspots for human trafficking in the United States. That is unacceptable.”
Several sources, including Pollard’s office and the Southwest Management District, pitched in to pay for overhead mobile cameras and license plate readers. Business owners shared their camera footage and some paid out of pocket for additional barriers.
“Everybody bought into what I believe works and what has been proven to work,” the council member said. “Until someone says it’s an issue, we’re going to continue with it. We’re not interfering with any businesses because most of them are closed at that time. We’re being very vocal about what we’re doing because we want people to be aware that the presence is still very heavy.”
Remi Ellison, owner of WOW African Hair Braiding on Bissonnet, said she became “deeply invested” in the transformation of the corridor because her customers felt unsafe.
“Over the years, my salon has been more than just a business. It has been a sanctuary of creativity,” she said. “Concerns for the safety of our customers and staff became a daily reality. The nighttime brought a sense of unease as the streets outside our doors filled with activities that no community should have to accept as normal.”
The barricades offered hope and a “remarkable shift” in the neighborhood, she said. The salon is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. so the overnight street closures don’t prohibit customers from accessing the business.
“It has revitalized our community, making our streets safer and our businesses welcoming,” she said. “Today we have a newfound sense of security and optimism.”
Houston police records show that prostitution solicitation arrests went down in the district by about 98 percent from 2024 to 2025. Human trafficking arrests were reduced by 71 percent, and overall crime dropped 88 percent, Pollard said.
Houston Police Commander Reece Hardy, who oversees the Westside Patrol Division, said the innovative decision to barricade streets could serve as a model for other crime hotspots.
“We realized that we were not going to arrest our way out of this problem,” he said. “We took an environmental design approach where we closed the streets, and what that did was disrupt the flow of elicit activity that has been occurring for decades.”
Hardy said the police department is committed to not only creating a business and family-friendly atmosphere along Bissonnet, they want to ensure that human trafficking victims have support to “escape a life they did not choose.”
The initiative also caught the attention of Texas lawmakers. State Rep. Ann Johnson, D-Houston, a former Harris County prosecutor, said at a 2024 press conference that she was appointed to defend a 13-year-old girl who was arrested for prostitution on the Bissonnet Track. The case went to the Texas Supreme Court, where a judge ruled that the child was a victim, not a criminal, Johnson said.
“That simple metal stick across the road may seem like it’s not much but I will tell you it is significant,” Johnson said of the gated barricades. “You don’t see pimps there anymore. It is the community finally telling the pimps that this road, for you, is closed. It is the community telling these young girls that, finally, we are here for you.”
Pollard said he now wants to add barricades beyond the Beltway. He’s aware that the criminal activity could shift to other districts but said he hasn’t received any reports of a spike in arrests in the adjacent areas. “If that does happen, this is a model of what you can do,” he said.
More economic development, including multifamily housing, tenants at the old Westwood Mall and a private charter school, has come to the area recently “because they found out what we were doing,” Pollard said.
“What we put out there is only half of the things we actually do from a strategy standpoint,” Pollard said. “We’re continuing to evolve. Criminals get up on what you’re doing and they change their strategies, so we have to change our strategies. We’re going to keep it as a top priority.”
Pollard acknowledged that a Google search of “Bissonnet Track” still brings up headlines about prostitution and trafficking, but “if you drive up and down Bissonnet, you can see that it’s safer and see that it’s cleaner.”
“The reputation of the area is changing,” he said.
This article appears in Private: Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2026.