THE FBI REBRANDS ITS SEX WORKER HARASSMENT CAMPAIGN.

AuthorBrown, Elizabeth Nolan

THE FBI IS once again aiding vice squad stings across the country and calling it an effort to stop child sex trafficking. Dubbed "Operation Independence Day," (OID) the month long July initiative saw agents going undercover to help arrest people for offenses that local cops can handle on their own.

In Mississippi, an FBI-led task force teamed up with two local police agencies and the Mississippi Gaming Commission to make five misdemeanor prostitution arrests. The FBI task force in Shreveport, Louisiana, worked with the state's Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control to make 25 arrests for soliciting prostitution, drug possession, and/or illegal possession of a handgun. Despite operating in 161 locations, OID arrested just 67 people on state or federal charges related to child exploitation, coercive prostitution, or "pimping." Many of these arrests were would-be customers of adult sex workers ensnared by cops posing as teens--i.e., cases involving no actual minors or "traffickers." A number of "promoting prostitution" charges were filed in cities that list no recovered victims, which suggests that sex workers are being charged with felonies for facilitating their own prostitution.

Just 82 teenagers nationwide were picked up for selling sex, and 21 more were "identified." It's hard to reconcile those numbers with the supposed hundreds of thousands of trafficked kids routinely invoked by anti-prostitution propagandists.

Operation Independence Day is a continuation of Operation Cross Country (OCC), according to the...

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