The announcement that a sprawling multiagency effort targeting human trafficking during Comic-Con had led to 14 arrests and to 10 potential victims receiving help from authorities was both a welcome sign of aggressive law enforcement and a troubling reminder of how entrenched sex trafficking is in the San Diego region.
Officers posed as sex customers and solicited sex on chat websites. They were part of a task force that included the state Department of Justice and CHP, Homeland Security and the FBI, National City and San Diego police, and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department. Those the task force helped included a 16-year-old girl.
This was only the latest in a long series of similar stings in a region that the FBI says is one of the 13 worst in the nation in prevalence of human trafficking. It also underscored District Attorney Summer Stephan’s repeated warnings that a new state law that took effect last year that repealed the crime of loitering for prostitution was not a “reform” but a gigantic mistake. In January, she wrote a U-T Opinion essay about how Main Street in National City had become “an open sex market with young women barely dressed and a line of sex buyers waiting in cars as casually as if they were at a drive-through ordering a hamburger.”
The ACLU praised the law and said “it would protect all people from discriminatory arrests and harassment.” Instead, it promotes trafficking. The Legislature should correct its mistake.
