Cloverleaf is a census-designated place of approximately 26,000 residents, located in eastern suburbs of Houston in  Harris County, Texas. Instances of prostitution and its ancillary crimes have generated residential responses and complaints to police. For example, in 1993, a group of Cloverleaf residents launched a campaign to reduce prostitution and related crimes in the city. According to reports, the group set up citizen patrols, some of who were armed, and some of who were responsible for videotaping crimes in the city as evidence.

In effort to reduce prostitution activity in the area, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office has conducted at least two street-level reverse stings in Cloverleaf. Both operations employed undercover male and female officers, who posed as decoy sex buyers and prostituted women. However, according to the then-Harris County Sheriff, the operations were primarily focused on apprehending sex buyers in effort to reduce the demand for commercial sex in the county,

 “This is not the first reverse prostitution sting nor will it be the last. We will continue to target the supply and demand of this type of criminal activity by going after those who solicit sex and those who sell sex.”

Sex buyers and prostituted women were then arrested as they approached and propositioned the officers. The identities of arrested offenders are often released to the media by police. For example, in a 2012 street-level reverse sting operation, 13 male sex buyers were arrested. The identities and ages of arrested offenders were included in reports by local news sources. In September 2013, an additional reverse sting operation resulted in the arrest of five male sex buyers, all of whom were apprehended after they attempted to solicit sex from an undercover female officer in an east Harris County school zone.