"Weeklong human trafficking sting operation nets 547 arrests across California," says the KTLA5 headline. With "Operation Reclaim & Rebuild," over 100 law enforcement agencies set out "rescuing victims of sexual slavery and human trafficking, apprehending their captors and disrupting the demand for vulnerable individuals," the Los Angeles news station reports.
To your casual observer, that surely suggests that hundreds of traffickers were arrested during the operation, which took place from January 26 through February 1. And with a few careful language tricks, police are happy to stoke this impression. Indeed, some 333 of those arrested were "exploiters," the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) brags.
But dig a little deeper and it becomes clear that this whole operation is a mirage, designed to give the impression that police are playing heroes instead of consensual sex cops.
