Twenty years ago on the evening of the first Tuesday of August, New York communities united and took to the streets to show that criminals did not scare them.

The event, National Night Out Against Crime, is now an occasion to celebrate.

Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly made appearances in different neighborhoods of the city, including Ridgewood, Queens, on August 5. At 7 p.m., while Bloomberg was at Police Precinct 104 in Ridgewood to celebrating the neighborhood’s 10% decrease in crime this year and the reduction of homicides by half, residents were getting together, not to celebrate, but to protest prostitution.

It’s an old problem. “It’s been 12 years. People who live here are angry,” said Johnny Mora, who lives near the most troubled streets: Troutman, Starr, Willoughby, Suydam, Hart, Onderdonk, Seneca and Cypress, which mark the border between Queens and Brooklyn. Mora said the authorities are not doing anything about street prostitution.

According to residents who marched down Starr Street carrying signs, prostitutes walk freely in this zone of factories and warehouses that is increasingly becoming residential and Hispanic. The police cannot arrest them unless the prostitutes are taken unawares with a client.

“Children see what’s going on in doorways and the discarded condoms,” said a resident who did not give her name.

“Sometimes people get confused and try to force girls who live here and have never done anything,” said María Arellano, a 52-year-old Ecuadorian and neighborhood resident.

Part of the problem is that the neighborhood is on the border between boroughs and neither of the districts take responsibility for the situation, said Juan D. Martínez, a city council candidate for District 34, which is presently represented by Diana Reyna.

Congresswoman Nydia Velásquez, who participated in the protest, said that within the next few weeks she will sit down with Police Precincts 83 and 104 to create a joint commission to address the prostitution problem.