Hayward is a city of approximately 160,000 residents located in the greater San Francisco Bay Area in Alameda County, California. Prostitution and the sex trafficking of minors are persistent and visible problems in the area. For example, in 2010, officers with the Hayward Police Department found two teenagers they believed were employed or “being groomed” for commercial sexual exploitation and arrested 15 adults, including three who faced pimping charges.  The investigation was part of a weeklong, nationwide sting operation targeting “underage prostitution” (or more accurately, child sex trafficking).

To combat demand for commercial sex, the Hayward Police Department has also partnered several times with police in neighboring communities (such as the Newark, Emeryville, Oakland and Berkeley Police Departments) as well as agents from the Southern Alameda County Major Crimes Task Force and the FBI, to conduct street-level reverse stings designed to apprehend sex buyers. In early February 2015, for example, the Cook County, Illinois Sheriff’s Office reported the completion of the ninth annual National Day of Johns Arrests and, in a press release, indicated that Hayward Police, in partnership with the Alameda District Attorney’s Office and Alameda County Vice Enforcement Team had arrested 11 male sex buyers between January 15, 2015 and February 1, 2015. The logistical details of the operation– including the identities of the men arrested– were not disclosed. Similarly, in early February 2016, Hayward was among the locations cited in a Cook County Sheriff’s Office press release as having participated in a nationwide demand reduction effort known as the National Johns Suppression Initiative. In the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl, HPD officers reportedly arrested three male sex buyers. The details of the arrests were again not reported. The Vacaville Police Department also noted Hayward’s use of demand-driven tactics when asked about operations targeting sex buyers in the National Assessment Survey.