Alpharetta is a city of roughly 58,000 residents, located in the northern suburbs of Atlanta in Fulton County, Georgia.  Reports of prostitution and sex trafficking activity in the community have occurred.  For example, in 2016 Alpharetta police announced that an undercover prostitution sting led them to a teenager being held against her will in a human trafficking operation. Police had responded to an ad on Backpage.com and an undercover detective met a woman at a hotel off Mansell Road. The female offered to solicit sexual services to the male for cash, and eventually  discovered she was a 17-year-old high school student being held against her will. She had been driven there from North Carolina by a couple arrested for human trafficking and booked in the Fulton County jail. Iin 2017 three Alpharetta men and a resident from Roswell were charged with pandering and violating the Georgia Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, in connection to a now-defunct prostitution ring operating in DeKalb County. Two commercial sex organizations centered in the city operated as illegal escort services.  An anonymous tip  received by police from a concerned citizen propelled law enforcement to embark on a months-long investigation leading to the identification of two organizations: Atlanta Gold Club Escorts and Lipstick and Shoes Escorts.

The Alpharetta Police Department has taken a proactive approach to target demand for commercial sex that is the underlying cause for all sex trafficking. In early February 2015, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office in Cook County, Illinois, announced the completion of the ninth annual National Day of Johns Arrests, a multi-jurisdictional effort to identify and arrest sex buyers. In a press release, the CCSO reported the names and arrest totals for each of the law enforcement agencies who participated in the initiative. Among the agencies listed was the Alpharetta Police Department, who reportedly arrested three johns between January 25, 2015 and February 1, 2015, with the support of the Georgia Attorney General’s Office. The logistical details of the APD operation– including the identities of the men arrested– were not disclosed to the public.