Millville, NJ

Categories:

Tactics Used
Auto Seizure ✓
Buyer Arrests ✓
Cameras ✓
Community Service ✓
Employment Loss ✓
Identity Disclosure ✓
IT Based Tactics ✓
John School ✓
Letters ✓
License Suspension ✓
Neighborhood Action ✓
Public Education ✓
Reverse Stings ✓
SOAP Orders ✓
Web Stings ✓

Millville is a city in Cumberland County, New Jersey with a population of roughly 28,000, near Vineland and Bridgeton. Prostitution and sex trafficking have posed persistent problems in the community for decades, and continue to generate complaints to law enforcement. Among the reported crimes linked to the local commercial sex market are minors involved in prostitution activity– individuals under the age of 18 have been picked up during anti-prostitution investigations for both offering and attempting to purchase acts of prostitution– and assaults on law enforcement officers and prostituted women. In late 2001, for example, a woman engaged in prostitution in Millville was killed after jumping from the moving vehicle of a male sex buyer who had picked her up on the city’s streets during what media outlets reported was a “prostitution deal gone bad.” Similarly, in July 2000, a man fled arrest in a vehicle following a reverse sting in Millville, making it to nearby Bridgeton before colliding with a tree and injuring at least two undercover law enforcement officers in the process.

Among their efforts to reduce demand for prostitution, the Millville Police Department has conducted street-level reverse stings since at least 1996, and released the identities of those arrested to local media outlets since at least 2001.  In a three-day operation conducted in September 2010, for instance, police targeted prostitution in the Center City area after receiving numerous citizen complaints over the prior months.  Police arrested 17 sex buyers and released their full names, ages, and the street of their residence.  The sting operation was conducted by members of the MPD’s Neighborhood Crime Prevention Unit, with assistance from the department’s patrol and detective divisions and the Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office.

Not all sex buyer arrests are the result of reverse stings using police decoys, but instead are the product of investigations of alleged offenses against real victims. For example, in May, 2012, the pastor of an Upper Township Methodist church announced his resignation after he had been arrested and charged with loitered in his hometown of Millville to engage a prostituted person. The sex buyer had been arrested in Millville after a police officer said he witnessed him driving in circles through downtown and letting a woman with a history of prostitution into his vehicle. The man denied the charges, and later pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct.

Key Partners

  • Millville Police Department
  • Cumberland County Prosecutor’s Office

Key Sources

Reverse Stings (with Identity Disclosure since at least 2001):

Arrests of Sex Buyers; Identity Disclosure; Employment Loss:

Sex Trafficking and Child Sexual Exploitation in the Area:

  • “Eight Charged with Prostitution in Sweep of Center City in Millville,” Press of Atlantic City, May 19 2000.

Background on Prostitution in the Area:

Documented Violence against Individuals Engaged in Prostitution in the Area:

State New Jersey
Type City
Population 28459
Location
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