Stevens Point is a city of roughly 26,000 residents, located in Portage County, approximately 25 miles west of Green Bay, Wisconsin. Prostitution activity has been well-documented in the city and surrounding communities, and in unincorporated areas of the county. Throughout  2017 and early 2018, police had fielded increasing levels of complaints from residents and businesses, and saw other indications of increased prostitution activity.

Consumer level demand provides the revenue stream for all prostitution and sex trafficking, and has therefore been targeted by local law enforcement agencies as a strategy for prevention and response. In March 2018, a reverse sting was conducted by local police in response to complaints from owners of local hotels.  The Assistant Police Chief said that the city had seen an increase in prostitution activity in the area, marketed through online ads.  Police posted ads on sites such as Craigslist and Backpage as part of their sting. Within about two minutes of posting the ad, potential sex buyers began contacting the phone number. The ad was posted for six hours, during which over 100 people contacted police.  Four of those individuals showed up and arranged to pay for sex, and were then arrested.

In order to better respond to prostitution, the Stevens Point City Council unanimously passed an ordinance intended to give local police and prosecutors new tools for dealing with the problem. If faced with the ordinance, violators could be fined up to 1500 dollars, rather than facing a criminal charge. While citing offenders for ordinance violations rather than charging them with crimes could be interpreted as lessening the severity of potential punishment, the typical punishments meted out for those charged with the criminal offense of soliciting prostitution in Wisconsin are typically no more serious than those outlined in the municipal ordinance.  Also, the municipal ordinance process is far less burdensome than processing cases in criminal courts, allows prosecutors to more easily cite and hopefully deter offenders.  The threshold of evidence and therefore the level of resources necessary to produce that evidence for criminal charges prostitution provide barriers to conducting reverse sting operations and subsequent prosecutions.  Another advantage of  Municipal Court processing is that the  revenue from fines stays within the cities that have expended the resources to apprehend offenders.