Dania Beach is a city of approximately 32,000 residents located near Hollywood, FL, in Broward County. Prostitution and sex trafficking are well-documented problems in the city and surrounding areas. To address the issue, Dania Beach Police has adopted several tactics targeting sex buyers, such as street-level reverse stings. Reverse stings have been conducted by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in the city since at least 1986. In 2001, Operation START (Sheriff’s Targeted Anti-Crime Response Team) worked to combat prostitution and drugs, arresting about 650 people on various charges (including buying sex) in Dania Beach alone.

From 1999 to 2004, city law enforcement reserved the right to seize the vehicles of those arrested for prostitution and drug-related crimes. During this time, the city established anti-prostitution zones where repeat offenders could be arrested for being in the targeted area. The auto-seizure law has since been overruled by county courts; it is unclear if the city’s exclusions zones remain in place.

In late February 2015, media outlets reported the arrest of at least one sex buyer during a web-based reverse sting. Broward County Sheriff’s deputies arrested the sex buyer at a Dania Beach hotel room after the man responded to an online advertisement for prostitution posted by law enforcement. The man, a police chief in nearby Miami Gardens, had his name publicized in several media outlets. It is unclear if other sex buyers were picked up during the sting.

The Florida State Legislature passed a bill that was signed into law in June of 2019 that created a registry of convicted sex buyers and provided a publicly-accessible listing of their identities. The registry data includes the names, addresses, and photos of people found guilty of soliciting sex from a prostituted person. The database is part of a broader legislation aimed at combating human trafficking by lowering demand for commercial sex. If fully implemented, all communities in Florida would be included in using identity disclosure as a tactic to arrest sex buyers.