North Bergen is a township of approximately 62,000 residents, located near West New York and Secaucus in New Jersey’s Hudson County, across the North River from Manhattan. Prostitution and teen sex trafficking are well-documented problems in the area.

To our knowledge, the North Bergen Police Department has conducted at least one street-level reverse sting. The two-day operation, undertaken in October 1993, placed decoys along the township’s Tonnelle Avenue. Fifty-two “men and youths” were arrested as a result. We did not find evidence of the offenders’ names being made available to the public.

In January 2014, the township made news when members of the local media reported that four adults had been apprehended by authorities after compelling a 15-year-old girl into prostitution in North Bergen and neighboring Belleville. The three men and one woman faced an array of charges, including (but not limited to) human trafficking, sexual assault, production of child pornography, distribution of child pornography, promoting the prostitution of a minor, endangering the welfare of a child, racketeering, and conspiracy. In January 2016, the Newark Star-Ledger reported that one of the traffickers involved in the case had been sentenced to 20 years in prison without the chance of parole.