Lincoln is the capital and second-largest city in Nebraska, with about 293,000 residents. Prostitution has been a persistent and visible problem in the area, and the sex trafficking of minors in Lincoln has been well documented for decades. Robberies of sex buyers have also been documented. Community members have complained to local law enforcement about an increase in public solicitation for commercial sex.  For example, In 2006, Lincoln police arrested four  men and cited a fifth after they allegedly propositioned an undercover officer posing as a prostituted person. The reverse sting came just hours after the Chief of Police and two police sergeants met with about 40 neighbors at the F Street Community Center to hear their concerns about prostitution, drugs and petty theft in the Everett and South Salt Creek neighborhoods.

To address these and other crimes stemming from the sex trade, the Lincoln Police Department has incorporated the use of street-level reverse stings to identify and apprehend sex buyers. “Traditional” reversals (i.e., those using a female undercover officer as a decoy on city streets) have been conducted since at least 2004, if not earlier.  The names of those arrested in stings are routinely publicized in press.

LPD officers have also conducted ad hoc stings targeting sex buyers; in November 1996, for example, the department announced the arrest of a city resident after he had responded to an ad suggesting prostitution in a local newspaper. Unbeknownst to the suspect, Lincoln police had already investigated the advertisement and arrested the woman who had placed it on prostitution-charges. Undercover officers then continued to field calls from individuals as they responded to the listing, intercepting at least one sex buyer in the process.

In 2005, the LPD extended its efforts by tracking Lincoln men attempting to purchase sex online. Using websites like Craigslist and Backpage.com, the LPD conducted several web-based reverse stings. Officers posted several decoy advertisements and arranged meetings with the sex buyers that replied. In August 2008, for example, one such operation resulted in the arrest of a man attempting to solicit sex from what he thought was a minor. The buyer was charged and sentenced with attempted first-degree sexual assault.

In 2015, law enforcement conducted two larger-scale reverse stings in September and December in Lincoln, netting 23 arrests in the process. The logistical details of both operations– specifically, whether they were conducted at street level or using web-based advertisements– were not disclosed, although the identities of arrestees were publicized in press. Following the September reversal, a LPD representative commented to the Lincoln Journal Star:

“With any business, which people consider prostitution and human trafficking part of a business, there’re two sides to it, supply and demand. If you can affect one of those, or both of them, it should theoretically drive down the problem. That’s what this operation was about, lowering the demand and arresting the johns.”

In January 2019, multiple people were arrested in an undercover prostitution sting in Lincoln, including one man charged with soliciting prostitution. Lincoln Police undercover officers responded to several advertisements offering sexual services with prostitutes.  Officers set up meetings at a hotel, as part of the operation. In February 2019, a man targeted in a sex trafficking investigation was arrested for buying sex in Lincoln. In September, 2019, Lincoln police and other officials arrested six men during a human trafficking reverse sting at a local hotel. Two men were arrested on charges of suspicion of enticement after they arranged to meet at the hotel to have sex with a 15-year-old girl. The other four men were charged on suspicion for soliciting a prostitute after they agreed online to pay for sex from an adult woman.  One of the arrested men was already faces assault and strangulation charges after allegedly slamming a woman’s head into a gravel road in the month prior to his arrest for soliciting.

Not all arrests of sex buyers are the result of sting operations; some are instead the product of investigations of specific allegations of offenses against real victims of sexual exploitation.  For example, in February, 2021 a Lincoln man was arrested following a child enticement investigation, and held in the Lancaster County Jail on the following charges: sex trafficking of a minor, sexual assault of a child, violation of the sex offender registry act, solicit prostitution and child abuse.  The investigation began after investigators received information that the suspect was contacting young females on various online chat rooms “with the express purpose of providing marijuana for sex.”  Three victims were identified; 14, 15 and 16 years old.  The man was a registered sex offender based upon a conviction of sexual assault of a minor in 2005.

In July, 2021, a former University of Nebraska-Lincoln student was arrested and charged for soliciting prostitution from a girl under the age of 18 after police say he invited two women to his dorm room and offered to pay to sexually abuse them. Two girls who had exchanged messages with the man on Snapchat agreed to visit him at his dorm, where he told them he would pay them money to visit, and later said he would pay them for a sexual threesome, and physically assaulted one of the girls who refused his advances.

Loss of employment is another consequence of buying sex that has occurred in the city. In August, 2016, 12 people were arrested in Lincoln as a part of a National Johns Suppression Initiative operation aimed at reducing sex trafficking by combating demand. One arrestee was a Lincoln Public Schools teacher and a man who taught classes at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, according to the Lincoln Police Department. The man taught physical education at Northeast High School. Lincoln Public Schools confirmed the man had been employed with the school system when he was arrested but no longer was. He worked for LPS for 23 years. Also arrested was the chairman of the Military Science Department at UNK. The man taught at the school through an arrangement with the ROTC and was paid by the corps. He resigned after the arrest.