Anoka County is the fourth-most-populous county in Minnesota, with a population of over 367,000. The county seat is the city of Anoka, and the largest city within the county is Blaine.  Prostitution and sex trafficking activity have been well-documented in the communities and unincorporated areas of the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul metro region, including within Anoka County.  This activity and the problems and ancillary crimes it generates results in complaints to law enforcement agencies from residents and businesses. Among the more serious problems associated with commercial sex in the area include child sex trafficking and violence among those in commercial sex transactions.

To combat prostitution and sex trafficking in the area, local law enforcement agencies have targeted consumer-level demand for commercial sex, which provides the revenue stream driving all commercial sex and trafficking. For example, in January, 2013, a web-based reverse sting operation was conducted in Coon Rapids. The operation was set up with the cooperation of the motel staff with both uniformed and plainclothes police officers involved.  The five men arrested came from the Twin Cities area – Brooklyn Park, New Brighton, Eagan, Champlin and Bethel – and ranged in age from 18 to 55.  They were all booked at the Anoka County Jail on gross misdemeanor prostitution charges and released after being given a court date.

In February, 2014 the Fridley PD arrested 19 male sex buyers. Officers posted a decoy advertisement on Backpage.com and set up an operation at a local hotel that cooperated in the sting. Six detectives conducted the operation– one female undercover officer posed as a prostituted woman in a room monitored by video and audio surveillance, while other officers waited in an adjacent room until deals were struck, then they arrested the men and took them to jail. All of the suspects were booked at the Anoka County jail and released.

In February 2014, the Chief of the Robbinsdale, MN Police Department was arrested in a reverse sting in Coon Rapids.  In that operation, 11 sex buyers were arrested. The Chief pleaded guilty in Anoka County Court, was fined $300, and received a stay of adjudication dependent upon completing a year of probation, completing a “john school” program at Breaking Free or a similar anti-prostitution program, and meeting all other the conditions set by the court – the prostitution case on his record will be dismissed if those conditions are met.

Sixteen people were arrested in Shakopee as part of a seven-day sex trafficking sting operation in the metro area in the days before and after the 2018 Super Bowl in Minneapolis. The Shakopee Police Department was assisted by agencies in Carver County, Chaska, Savage, Belle Plaine and New Prague. First they worked with the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from January 26 to February 2, and then they assisted the Guardian Angels Task Force. A Shakopee home was used as part of an undercover operation.  The BCA operations involved detectives posing as minors online, and the sting resulted in 36 arrests of people charged with solicitation of a minor, and seven were booked for sex trafficking or promoting prostitution.  The BCA leads the inter-agency Human Trafficking Investigators Task Force, which includes personnel from the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office, the St. Paul and Minneapolis police departments, Department of Homeland Security Investigations, and the Ramsey County Attorney’s office. The reverse sting also included the participation of the Carver, Crow Wing, Dakota, Pope and Ramsey County Sheriff’s Offices, the Belle Plaine, Chaska, New Prague, North St. Paul, Savage and Shakopee police departments, and the Scott and Washington county attorney’s offices.

In July, 2019 the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s Human Trafficking Investigators Task Force led a two-day undercover operation in the Twin Cities metro area that led to the arrests of 11 people (three arrested for sex trafficking or promotion of prostitution, and 8 arrested for solicitation of a minor or solicitation of prostitution with a person under 16 years of age. In addition to the arrests, the operation led to 18 trafficking victims being recovered from trafficking situations and offered services. The Task Force conducted the operation in partnership with local agencies including the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office, Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, Isanti County Sheriff’s Office, Kanabec County Sheriff’s Office, Blaine Police Department, Bloomington Police Department, Brooklyn Park Police Department, Buffalo Police Department, Minnesota, Coon Rapids Police Department, Howard Lake Police Department, Minneapolis Police Department, City of Rochester Police Department, Saint Paul Police Department, Upper Sioux Police Department and investigators from the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office.

In March, 2023, a Coon Rapids man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his conviction in a sextortion scheme that targeted minors online. The man had previously worked as a middle school paraprofessional in special education. He pleaded guilty to two counts of production of “child pornography” (child sexual abuse materials, or CSAM), one count of enticement of a minor, and one count of interstate communications with intent to extort. He used Snapchat, Grindr, and an online gaming forum he owned and administered to carry out the scheme against children. From April 2016, through August 2021, the man used his position as the forum administrator to groom children to produce CSAM and to be sexually abused by him. The man provided the children with in-game perks, privileges, and other gifts as part of his scheme. He coerced a 13-year-old to engage in sexually explicit acts on camera, and then threatened to release those images if the child did not follow his demands. The case was the result of an investigation conducted by the FBI, the Anoka County Sheriff’s Office, the Erie County, Ohio Sheriff’s Office, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and the Waterloo Regional Police Service in Ontario, Canada.