South San Francisco is a city of about 64,000 residents in San Mateo County, CA, located on the San Francisco Peninsula in the San Francisco Bay Area. The city is colloquially known as “South City.” Prostitution and sex trafficking have been longstanding, well-documented issues in the city and surrounding areas. This activity and the problems and ancillary crimes it generates result in complaints to law enforcement agencies from residents and businesses. Additionally, reports of targeted violence and homicide of prostituted women have also occurred in the city. Among the more serious issues associated with the city’s commercial sex market is the sex trafficking of adults and minors. For example, in August 2011, a Sacramento couple was arrested at a South San Francisco hotel on suspicion of sex trafficking three teenage girls. The investigation began after officers received a tip that a runaway girl had been seen at a South San Francisco hotel. Upon arriving to the hotel, officers found a 19-year-old girl and two juvenile girls in the hotel room. The girls told police that they were being sex trafficked by a married couple. Both the husband and wife were found at the hotel and arrested by police. They were booked into San Mateo County Jail for human trafficking under the age of 18, pimping, pandering, and conspiracy.

In October 2014, a San Francisco federal grand jury indicted 10 people who allegedly were involved in a sex trafficking operation in which the offenders lured adult females, primarily from Asian countries, to the Northern District of California, where they were sex trafficked at various brothels in apartments across the Bay Area. All 10 defendants were charged with Conspiracy to Conduct a Racketeering Enterprise for operating 40 brothels in the greater San Francisco Bay Area from at least August 2002 through July 2014. The cities included San Mateo, the site of 14 of the brothels, Redwood City, Belmont, San Bruno, Colma, Foster City, South San Francisco, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, and Pinole. “The Enterprise” rented the apartments used as brothels through nominee lessees for limited periods of time, and then opened other brothels, often with overlapping rental periods. “The Enterprise” used social networking websites such as MyRedbook.com, Craigslist.org, and Backpage.com to post advertisements for prostitution services, which included contact information and photographs of nude and partially nude women assuming provocative and suggestive poses. “The Enterprise’s” telephone operators answered the calls for telephone numbers posted on the website advertisements for prostitution services, coordinated the meeting place between the sex trafficking victims and sex buyers, and directed the sex buyers to a particular brothel. In 2016, “The Enterprise’s” leader pleaded guilty to all 32 counts charged in the indictment. In 2017, he was sentenced to 46 months in prison and was ordered to pay a $5,269,698 forfeiture money judgment for his role.

In effort to reduce instances of commercial sex in the county, law enforcement has been known to conduct both street-level and web-based reverse sting operations targeting sex buyers who are responsible for driving the demand for commercial sex in the area. For example, in July 2007, a prostitution sting scheduled to coincide with Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game, called “Operation Strikeout,” resulted in over 130 arrests of suspected sex traffickers/pimps, sex buyers, and prostituted persons drawn to the Bay Area for the well-attended events. The operation — which covered South San Francisco as well as Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose, Campbell, and Fremont — particularly targeted online child sexual exploitation, which involves the use of online ads and electronic communication indicating that a minor is being sexually exploited in exchange for money. In 2015, the South San Francisco Police Department, in addition to 30 other Bay Area law enforcement agencies, participated in the 9th annual nationwide child sex trafficking investigation, “Operation Cross County IX,” led by the FBI San Francisco Division and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC). As a result of the investigation, 149 minors were recovered and 153 sex traffickers were arrested nationwide. The operations in the San Francisco Bay Area resulted in the rescue of six child sex trafficking victims and the arrest of eight sex traffickers/pimps and 52 male sex buyers. Law enforcement officials conducted both “in-call” and “out-call” operations in hotels, casinos, truck stops, and in other areas known to be frequented by both prostituted people, sex traffickers, and sex buyers. According to reports, the operation was focused on apprehending sex buyers and sex traffickers across the nation.

In addition to apprehending sex buyers and sex traffickers through reverse sting operations, police have also arrested sex buyers through alternative measures such as citizen tips to police, brothel raids, traffic stops, investigations of other crimes, police or witness observations, and/or from prostitution and sex trafficking investigations. For example, in 2014, South San Francisco Police Officers conducted a prostitution sting operation at a local hotel on East Grand Avenue in South San Francisco. During the operation, officers arranged to meet with a prostituted woman on a prostitution-based website. After arranging a meeting time, officers were directed by the woman to her room at the hotel. Officers responded to the room and subsequently contacted a 17-year-old female juvenile and an 18-year old female adult inside, along with evidence of a sex trafficking operation. The evidence linked the registered guest of the room, a 24 year-old man out of Citrus Heights, to the sex trafficking operation. However, the offender was not immediately located on the hotel premises or in the room with the sex trafficking victims. Police apprehended the sex trafficker during a traffic stop in the area of East Grand Avenue as he was attempting to leave the area. The offender was arrested and later booked at the San Mateo County Jail in Redwood City on human trafficking, pimping, and pandering charges and was held on $500,000 bail. Part of the investigation revealed that the sex trafficker would contact women on various social networking sites, befriend them, and then sexually exploit them in exchange for money. The juvenile female was determined to be a missing person out of Santa Clara County. According to reports, she had walked away from a Children’s Shelter and at the time was considered at risk as a commercially sexually exploited minor. The sex trafficker’s identity and image were released by police to local media outlets.

In October 2017, an investigation into a deadly San Jose shooting led police to arrest three men in connection with a crime spree targeting Bay Area brothels in South San Francisco, Milpitas, and Fremont. The investigation found that four crimes, including the murder, all occurred around the same time and involved the same suspects, in addition to the locations of all four crimes being brothels. In Milpitas, police responded to a suspicious circumstance call and found a woman who reported being robbed and sexually assaulted. In Fremont, officers responded to a home invasion robbery and found three women who reported being robbed at gunpoint, one of whom also reported being sexually assaulted. In South San Francisco, officers responded to a robbery call and encountered a woman who reported being robbed and sexually assaulted at gunpoint two days prior. The men were charged with murder, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy, robbery, kidnapping, and sexual assault. The offenders’ identities and photos were included in reports by local news sources.