The effort coincided with the Super Bowl in the Los Angeles area this year, but Sheriff Alex Villanueva said the event didn’t lead to more statewide arrests than usual.
A statewide effort coordinated by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department to crack down on the sex trade, which happened to coincide with this year’s Super Bowl, resulted in nearly 500 prostitution-related arrests and the rescue of dozens of human trafficking victims, officials said Tuesday, Feb. 15.
The days leading up to the big game typically come with a tremendous presence of local and federal law enforcement, including task forces specifically searching for cases of sex trafficking. That’s coupled with outreach from advocacy groups. Alan Smyth, CEO of the advocacy group Saving Innocence, said they saw an “uptick” in cases of alleged human trafficking in Los Angeles ahead of the 2022 Super Bowl during a news conference on Tuesday, Feb. 15.
One young woman told Costa Mesa police who had posed as clients that she had been lured into the sex trade as a minor by her pimp, and had been working for him for two years, Villanueva said. He said officers arrested the alleged pimp and found a loaded, unregistered handgun in his possession. A total of 192 of the arrests during operation Reclaim and Rebuild, nearly 39%, were made by the Los Angeles Police Department, according to LASD statistics. Of those taken into custody by that department, 14 people were suspected of facilitating or orchestrating sex trafficking, and six were arrested for attempting to buy sexual services, LAPD Chief Michel Moore said at a meeting of the Los Angeles Police Commission on Tuesday.
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