Over 500 ‘Johns’ were arrested on Super Bowl Sunday in a National Super Bowl Sex Trafficking Sting. 570 ‘Johns’ to be exact as well as 23 pimps were all arrested in a sex trafficking sting that was operated by a number of law enforcement agencies. According to NBC Chicago on Feb. 2, this most recent operation to bring down sex traffickers and ‘Johns’ or would-be buyers ran between Jan. 15 through Feb. 1 and a total of 37 law enforcement agencies in 17 different states were involved in taking them down.
Leading up to this huge sex trafficking sting, 60 arrests were made a week before the big game on Sunday. According to Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart:
We go after the prostitution operations 24/7. In that, we get the traffickers, the pimps and so on. This was primarily focused on the ‘johns,’ the people buying these services.
According to My Fox Memphis, the whole idea for this sex operation sting to crackdown on the would-be sex ‘buyers’ and the sex traffickers or ‘pimps’ was thought of by Sheriff Dart back in 2011. Since then, this sting has grown pretty fast with more and more law enforcement agencies getting in on it with Cook County. With 37 law enforcement agencies throughout 17 states involved since then, this is one of the biggest and most successful sex sting operations yet.
According to Sheriff Dart, they placed fake ads on Backpage.com to bring them in. They even had an ad up for three days to let the ‘pimps’ and ‘johns’ know that they would be out arresting people during the sting and they still came out and attempted to ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ sex.
It wasn’t just adults the sex traffickers were trying to sell as they were attempting to sell juveniles as well. Just some of the charges filed on the traffickers and would-be buyers included adults and juvenile felony sex trafficking, commercial sexual abuse of a minor, pimping and rape, kidnapping, possession of illegal firearms, and drug trafficking.
This sex sting has been going on for four years now and a total of 2,900 ‘johns’ have been arrested because of it.
