Elk City is a city of approximately 12,000 residents, situated along Interstate 40 and Route 66 in Western Oklahoma’s Beckham County. It is roughly equidistant between Oklahoma City and Amarillo, Texas.  Prostitution and sex trafficking have been well documented problems in the city for decades. For example, in 1986, agents of the FBI and Internal Revenue Service appeared at the office of an Elk City attorney armed with checks he had written to an exclusive Oklahoma City “prostitution service.”  The lawyer would later admit that he was a customer of the service, whose prostituted women were believed to have been used as bribes and kickbacks during the height of the oil and gas boom in western Oklahoma.

To address the consumer demand for prostitution that drives all sex trafficking, at least one large scale anti-prostitution effort has been undertaken in Elk City that focused on the arrest of sex buyers. In October 2013, the Elk City Police Department and agents from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs conducted three undercover prostitution stings in the area, as “part of an ongoing effort to find and protect potential victims of human trafficking.” Over the course of seven days, officers arrested 25 people– 16 prostituted women, 3 procurers, and 3 sex buyers. It is unclear whether the johns were arrested using traditional reverse sting tactics (namely, that they were approached by an undercover female officer posing as a decoy) or by some other means. The names and identities of all of the individuals arrested were not released.

Some arrests of sex buyers are the result of investigations of alleged offenses against real victims, and not the product of stings using police decoys.  For example, in February, 2022, an Elk City man was arrested and charged recently after allegedly raping a 17-year-old, and also allegedly threatening to kill the victim and her family if she told anyone about the incident. According to a probable cause affidavit filed by Elk City Police, the man was arrested after police were notified earlier that morning. The court document stated that the victim told police that the man had driven to the victim’s Elk City home and contacted her via text message – telling her to come to his car. The victim said that’s when the defendant allegedly offered her money in exchange for sex, but she refused. From there, the defendant allegedly committed the sexual assault. The man was charged in Beckham County District court with first degree rape by force or fear, procuring child prostitution, and harassing and threatening electronic communication.

Oklahoma law prohibits people from engaging in prostitution under 21 O.S. 1029, which addresses both prostitution and solicitation of prostitution in the same manner under the same statute. Both prostitution and solicitation are misdemeanors. The penalties for prostitution and solicitation include a jail term of 30 days to one year and a fine of up to $2,500 on the first offense. The fines increase with subsequent convictions, and the court may also mandate 40 to 80 hours of community service.