Perrysburg Township is a community of approximately 13,000 residents, located south of Toledo near Perrysburg in Wood County, Ohio. Situated along Interstate-75, the township has struggled with prostitution and sex trafficking activity in and around local truck stops and motels for decades. When asked by members of the press what led officers to target sex buyers in addition to prostituted women, a sheriff’s detective stated “[the WCSO is] trying to solve the human trafficking problem here and get the younger girls out of these situations… it’s a part of a larger problem here in Northwest Ohio.”

To address these issues, the Wood County Sheriff’s Office has conducted prostitution operations in the township that resulted in the arrest of multiple male sex buyers. The first operation, conducted in late June 2012, was conducted just days after sheriff’s deputies arrested an unknown number of individuals in the township during “Operation Cross Country,” an FBI-led national anti-sex trafficking initiative conducted annually. It is unclear if the WCSO consciously targeted sex buyers and/or employed the use of decoys to intercept offenders during the two operations in question (held in May and June 2012), as the details of the operations were not released. Following the arrests, the names, ages, and mugshots of each of the offenders were publicized by local media outlets.

In December 2013, six men faced various prostitution charges after getting arrested at a hotel in Perrysburg. The Wood County Sheriff’s Office, Perrysburg Police, and State of Ohio Attorney General’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation conducted a human trafficking operation at a hotel along the Fremont Pike. One man was charged with promotion of prostitution, and the other five with misdemeanor charges for soliciting prostitution.