The presence of prostitutes on Dorchester Avenue will be the focus of a Monday night meeting at Saint Mark’s church hall. The neighborhood-wide meeting, set for next Monday, Sept. 24, at 7 p.m., is being put together by District 3 Councillor Frank Baker’s office.

“In response to numerous constituent calls I have received regarding this matter, I feel as though it is necessary to get the whole community together in an effort to find out what is being done to curtail this major problem,” Baker wrote in a letter to constituents. Boston Police Department officials will attend, he added.

Referring to the role of civic groups in teaming up recently to knock down a proposal for a billboard by the Expressway Motors business on Morrissey Boulevard, Baker called the groups to likewise rally over the prostitution problem.

“I was very impressed at the way our civic groups came together to prohibit the installation of future billboard along our stretch of highway, and I think it is time that we come together in the same manner to show our displeasure with the number of prostitutes on Dorchester Avenue,” the councillor wrote.

Police in District C-11 have frequently tackled the issue. One particularly memorable incident occurred last year in the Savin Hill Avenue area, according to a police report that noted: “The female told officers that they were not engaged in a sex for fee arrangement but instead that the male suspect was her boyfriend whom she had been dating for about seven or eight minutes.”

But some officials have acknowledged the problem can be mitigated, but not wiped out. In 2008, after attempting to address the issue through “Operation Squeeze” and multiple arrests, one police captain told the Reporter: “They don’t call it the world’s oldest profession for nothing.

– REPORTER STAFF