Roseville is a suburb of Sacramento with roughly 152,000 residents, located along Interstate 80.  The Roseville Police Department has made prostitution arrests over the years and fielded numerous complaints from residents about prostitution activity.  The town also has known cases of sex trafficking, such as a 2010 case in which a couple held a 15 year old runaway girl and forced her to engage in prostitution (i.e., child sex trafficking) for two weeks, in Roseville and Sacramento.  To address prostitution and sex trafficking, the Roseville Police Department has conducted reverse stings.  For example, in 2008, Roseville police posted a decoy online ad and made 12 arrests of sex buyers at a hotel that collaborated with police in setting up the reverse sting.  During similar operation in August 2017, Roseville police cited 10 people for “soliciting a prostitute.”

More recently, a Sacramento County sheriff’s detective and 11 others were arrested during a web-based reverse sting conducted in December, 2017. The sheriff’s department was notified of the arrest and conducted an internal  investigating of the detective’s involvement in prostitution. All of the men were cited in the field by officers and then released on a misdemeanor charge.  Police said eleven men and a woman responded to the ads and were told to meet their “dates” at a location in Roseville, and were arrested after they offered the undercover officers money in exchange for sex.  Those cited had their name, age, and city of residence released to news outlets.  In March, 2019, Roseville police arrested a Chino Police Department sergeant on suspicion of paying to sexually abuse a 16-year-old girl, and solicitation of prostitution. In January, 2022, Sacramento police announced that they had made 55 arrests during a major operation targeting sex trafficking that took almost a month to complete. The sting operation focused on tackling the demand side of human trafficking, and the operation included detectives posing as prostituted persons online. Sacramento police reported collaborating with agencies on reverse stings in other communities including Roseville, Folsom, Sacramento and Rockville.

Some local arrests of sex buyers are the result of investigating allegations against real victims as opposed to the product of sting operations using police decoys. For example, in July, 2009, Roseville Police officers arrested two hotel guests on suspicion of prostitution after investigating a tip from an anonymous source led officers to the 1900 block of Taylor Road to a Roseville hotel. A woman was arrested for two previous bench warrants from Placer County for vandalism and transportation or sales of a controlled substance, and officers then found cash and evidence on her cell phone that led them to believe she had been offering prostitution services through a website. Officers also arrested a Roseville resident on suspicion of “soliciting a prostitute” and was released later that day with a citation to appear after posting $2,500 bail. After searching the woman’s room, Roseville police seized methamphetamine paraphernalia and arrested two men who were booked into the Roseville City Jail before being released on a citation to appear in court.

A local law enforcement respondent to the 2022 National Assessment Survey reported that the city has arrested sex buyers by means other than reverse stings; conducted public education specifically targeting the demand for commercial sex; and used cameras to deter or collect evidence against sex buyers, all since 2015. The respondent also said that Roseville police have used males as decoy prostituted persons and arrested female sex buyers in at least one operation.