The broad-daylight prostitution around Harry Hines Boulevard, Denton Drive and Royal Lane in northwest Dallas has been so obvious for so long it’s a punchline.
That is, unless you start to think about the lives of the women lined up in the parking lot behind the Paris sex shop, some plainly underage, wearing almost nothing in every sort of weather while cruel-eyed pimps kept watch in nearby cars.
Anyone who observed this scene for any amount of time — a few minutes would do — could watch men approach the women, then see them walk together into the Paris “bookstore.” It didn’t take a genius to figure out the store was the epicenter of trafficking and prostitution.
The horror of what all this was got a little daylight of its own in a 21-page indictment handed up Tuesday.
Federal authorities charged eight people with crimes connected to prostitution at the Paris bookstore, including conspiracy, trafficking and gun charges.
Officials said this investigation took three years. We credit Dallas Police Chief Daniel Comeaux for working with federal partners to finally deliver these criminal charges. We had almost given up hope that the law would actually push back against the pimps and traffickers that had swarmed this area.
In June 2025, our own Robert Wilonsky, who grew up and still lives a stone’s throw from the intersection of Denton Drive and Royal Lane, took a look at how bad things had gotten.
“At all hours, it seems, that enormous expanse of concrete is full of working women in varying shades of tight tops and tiny bottoms. Over a few visits the last couple of weeks, I noticed the Paris can get so busy traffic spills onto Harry Hines,” he wrote.
The situation was unbearable. To his credit, Comeaux made it a priority. In February, Dallas police and federal agents raided the Paris. The indictment made public Tuesday shows what their investigation found.
But giving up is never an option. The minute the law turns its back, places like the Paris take root, and operations just grow. What was happening along Denton Drive and Harry Hines was hurting businesses and residents all around the area.
And it was hurting the women who were being trafficked most of all. The indictment tells of women with bruises on their faces, road rash and stab wounds.
Some of those involved in running the Paris went by stupid, Orwellian nicknames like “Ma” and “Unc” even as they watched abused women be abused again and again, according to the indictment.
Bringing a case like this is not easy. But it has to be done, over and over. A city cannot turn a blind eye to these crimes. Only suffering follows if we do.
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