Spring Valley is a village of approximately 33,000 residents. Located 20 miles north of Manhattan in the towns of Ramapo and Clarkstown in Rockland County, New York. Prostitution rings are known to operate in the city and generate a wide range of problems. In an effort to curtail local demands for commercial sex, the Spring Valley Police Department has collaborated with the Rockland County Sheriff’s Office and the Ramapo Police Department to conduct at least two street-level reverse stings in the downtown area. One operation, undertaken in October 2008, resulted in the arrest of 15 sex buyers in less than 3 hours. To discourage the men from reoffending, police seized arrestees’ vehicles and released their names to the local media. When asked why the SVPD periodically conducted such operations, Police Chief Paul Modica told The Journal News that “many of the prostitutes and johns are [the village’s] robbery victims. If we can keep them out of the village, we are serving two purposes.”

Some local arrests of sex buyers are the result of allegations of crimes against real victims rather than the product of reverse stings using undercover police decoys. For example, in June 2018, police investigated and then conducted enforcement actions to dismantle a prostitution operation run from a house in a residential neighborhood of Spring Valley. Six people were arrested as a result. The investigation began when the Ramapo Police Department executed a search warrant at a Sherwood Ave. residence. Two women were arrested for prostitution, three men were charged with promoting prostitution and creating a public nuisance, and one man was accused of patronizing a prostitute.