HAYWARD — A regional operation targeting child prostitution rescued several girls from the sex trade last week, representatives from the FBI and Bay Area law enforcement agencies announced Monday.
Child prostitution “is a definite problem, and it’s widespread throughout the Bay Area,” Oakland police Lt. Johnny Davis said.
Officials at the news conference, held at the Hayward Police Department, said they rescued six girls under age 18 during the four-day sting from Wednesday through Saturday. Of the girls rescued, four were in Oakland, one in San Francisco and one in San Rafael, officials said.
Seven suspected pimps were arrested during the operation, including three in Richmond.
Police in Richmond, Hayward and Oakland were joined by more than a dozen other Bay Area law enforcement organizations. The coalition was part of a nationwide effort that resulted in the rescue of 79 children and arrest of 104 suspected pimps, said Michael Gavin, assistant special agent for the FBI in San Francisco.
Gavin said traditional street prostitution is a multilayered problem, encompassing sexual exploitation of children and the growing use of online communications technology in facilitating the sex trade.
“These areas where we liberate the most children are places where illegal prostitution is also prevalent,” Gavin said. “To impact one, to decrease the children being exploited, you have to attack the other. It’s a byproduct.”
Hayward police Chief Diane Urban said a “paradigm shift” in the way the public and law enforcement agencies view prostitution is key to saving children and young adults from the illicit trade.
“A lot of these young people who are exploited were initially runaways,” Urban said. “It’s very insidious … people don’t choose this.”
Among 57 cities nationwide, Bay Area cities accounted for about 8 percent of the rescued children, according to FBI statistics.
The multiagency approach started seven years ago, when the Bay Area Innocence Lost Working Group sought to reduce child prostitution with regional, multiday sting operations aimed at children and the adults exploiting them. This year’s effort was coordinated by the Innocence Lost National Initiative, a partnership among the FBI, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and local and county law enforcement agencies.
Officials said the six juveniles found working in the sex trade were females between the ages of 15 and 17.
Lt. Davis said the four girls in Oakland were all African-American.
All the girls are receiving social services, Urban said.
In Richmond, more than a dozen undercover and uniformed officers conducted sting operations Friday night, surveilling local prostitution hot spots surrounding the 23rd Street corridor. That night, police arrested three women on suspicion of prostitution, with the youngest being 20 years old.
No underaged prostitutes were found during the Richmond operation, but eight women were arrested on suspicion of prostitution.
Contact Robert Rogers at 510-262-2726. Follow him at Twitter.com/roberthrogers.
