Bridgeport is a city of approximately 148,000 residents, an hour’s drive north of New York, near Fairfield, Connecticut. It is the largest city in the state, with a robust and well-documented commercial sex market. Media reports of street and in-house prostitution in the city date back to the 1880s. Local law enforcement and federal agents also identified one of the earliest documented cases of U.S. domestic minor sex trafficking, in 1965.  The persistent presence of sex trafficking is seen, for example, in arrests made in a case in November 2013.  Federal authorities and local police arrested three men after breaking up a sex trafficking operation in the Hollow neighborhood of Bridgeport. In a year-long investigation, police learned the group was part of a larger, multi-state ring that trafficked women, and investigators said the ring is believed to have ties to organized crime in Mexico.  Similar cases involving child sex trafficking victims were documented between 2007 and 2009.

To combat consumer-level demand, the Bridgeport Police Department has conducted periodic street-level reverse stings since at least 1993, in response to community complaints about prostitution. Arrested sex buyers may have their names, ages, and hometowns reported in the media. In 1993, city officials established an ordinance enabling police to seize the vehicles of those arrested for solicitation. While the practice has not been routinely enforced in the years since one BPD captain noted that “the fact that the possibility exists that someone can lose their car can be a deterrent.”

In recent years, the city has also taken steps to tighten regulations on sex-oriented businesses. In the spring of 2012, Bridgeport residents filed a petition demanding greater restrictions on and increased surveillance of the city’s many massage parlors and strip clubs. In December 2012, the city shut down 10 massage parlors after reports of illegal activity.