McKeesport is a city of approximately 17,000 residents, located 20 miles southwest of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Prostitution has been well documented in the city and surrounding areas. This activity and the problems and ancillary crimes it generates result in complaints to law enforcement agencies from residents and businesses. Among the more serious crimes associated with the local commercial sex market is sex trafficking. For example, in 2022, a local teacher and youth coach was arrested and accused of sexually assaulting 11 children over several years. His charges included statutory sexual assault, promoting prostitution, involuntary deviant sexual intercourse, sexual assault, indecent assault, corruption of minors, and criminal use of a communication facility.

Consumer-level demand provides the revenue stream for all prostitution and sex trafficking and has therefore been targeted by local law enforcement agencies as a strategy for prevention and response. In the late 1980s, the McKeesport Police Department conducted several street-level reverse stings in an effort to identify and apprehend local sex buyers. The operations, which utilized undercover female officers as decoys, were successful, sometimes netting upwards of 20 arrests in a single evening. Some of the offenders’ names were published in local media outlets.