Concord is a suburb of San Francisco, California with around 124,000 residents. The Concord Police Department has responded to citizen concerns and complaints about prostitution in local hotels and on street corners by raiding the businesses suspected of promoting prostitution and staging prostitution stings – including reverse stings. The arrested prostituted women and sex buyers have their identities, ages, and hometowns reported in the media. Concord police have also conducted web-based reverse stings in addition to the street-level operations.

In February 2020, the results from the statewide “Operation Reclaim and Rebuild” were announced. The week-long operation was led by the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force and involved 70 participating federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies (including the Concord Police Department) and task forces from across California. In addition to recovering and serving victims of sex trafficking and arresting then prosecuting their captors, Operation Reclaim and Rebuild also sought to disrupt the demand for vulnerable victims by targeting sex buyers. Investigators focused enforcement operations wherever the trafficking of human beings took place and included street-level and internet-based operations. The operation deployed specially trained cyber detectives who posed as vulnerable teenagers and interacted with suspects on social media to target traffickers and buyers who sought to exploit and sexually abuse children. Operation Reclaim and Rebuild resulted in 266 male sex buyers arrested for the charge of solicitation, as well as the recovery of 76 adult and 11 minor victims and the arrest of 27 suspected traffickers. In the press release announcing these results, the head of the task force said, “To the Johns: Purchasing commercial sex is illegal and buying sex adds to the exploitation of those involved.” Downloadable Material: Talking Points and Slides