Palatka is a city of roughly 11,000 residents, located in Florida’s Putnam County, southwest of St. Augustine. Law enforcement and local residents have noted problems with street prostitution in the city for decades years; individuals attempting to purchase sex in Palatka have also reported being robbed. Sex trafficking has also been well documented locally.  For example, in 2012, a Palatka resident pled guilty to sex trafficking an underage girl in nearby Gainesville.

Among the city’s efforts to reduce the presence and negative impacts of prostitution, the Palatka Police Department has conducted periodic reverse stings since at least 2002, if not earlier. Operations are conducted at street-level, using female undercover officers as decoys. Once arrested, sex buyers may be subject to SOAP orders, barring them from reentering areas of the city known for prostitution activity. Arrestees’ names are also occasionally publicized in media outlets. In April 2022, four men were arrested by the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office in a street-level reverse sting conducted in Palatka. Undercover officers at various locations in Palatka and East Palatka notified deputies of solicitors on the sidewalks, and then directed solicitors to a specific location where they were arrested. Each man was charged with soliciting for prostitution and booked into the Putnam County Jail. Their names and other identifying information were released to the press.

In late 2003, Palatka officials announced the establishment of a “focus group” for residents, business owners and city officials to address the city’s prostitution problem. The group met on a regular basis for several months, during which members brainstormed prostitution-reduction tactics that could be implemented. Media outlets reported that an auto seizure ordinance and extreme shaming tactics (i.e., having sex buyers hold up signs noting they’d been convicted of solicitation) were among the tactics discussed, but none appear to have been formally instituted.

Employment loss is another consequence of buying sex in Palatka.  In August, 2014, a former candidate for Putnam County Sheriff resigned from his police position after he was arrested in a prostitution sting operation in St. Johns County. He had been arrested as a suspect in “Operation Summer Lovin’ which was launched in response to a rash of complaints the St. Johns Sheriff’s Office and St. Augustine Police Department had received about prostituted persons working out of a hotel and advertising services via social media. Undercover detectives placed decoy advertisements online and arrested 14 people over a four-day period. The Palatka officer began that position in 1997 and ascended the ranks to operations commander, which he left in 2011 for an unsuccessful bid for Putnam County Sheriff. He returned to the Palatka Police Department in January 2012 as a detective and was assigned to investigate persons and property crimes. The man was placed on administrative leave on a Saturday morning and submitted a brief resignation letter the following afternoon. Up to that point, he held a clear track record with his employer.