New Bedford is a city of approximately 101,000 residents, located in southeastern Massachusetts near Fall River. Prostitution has been a well-documented problem in the area, spanning more than a century, and has included cases of child sex trafficking. Problems associated with the local prostitution market have also included a case of a serial killer who apparently targeted women in street-level prostitution in the city, murdering nine women in the late 1980s.

In an effort to reduce consumer-level demand for prostitution, the New Bedford Police Department has conducted reverse stings and publicized the identities of the men arrested since at least 1996. One operation was a street-level reverse sting in October 2014, in which officers arrested four men for attempting to solicit sex from a female undercover officer in the Acushnet Avenue area. Following the operation, all of the men’s names, ages, and hometowns were released to the public.

New Bedford city officials have also discussed imposing an auto seizure ordinance for several years. The ordinance would allow law enforcement to seize and impound vehicles used for the purposes of solicitation. As of 2014, it was unclear whether or not the ordinance had been established.