A youth pastor. A high school teacher and football coach. And an operations director of a large hospital network.
These were among the 46 men arrested in a massive undercover prostitution sting this month in Southlake and Frisco, local and federal authorities announced.
Roughly a dozen law enforcement agencies participated in the operation Jan. 12 and 13 at the Hilton at Southlake Town Square and Hyatt near Stonebriar Centre in Frisco. The men had arranged online to meet at the hotels intending to pay for sex, authorities said.
Officials have not divulged names of those arrested. The men face charges of solicitation of prostitution, a felony in Texas punishable with up two years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
“When you think of trafficking, you think of streets in Dallas or Fort Worth or strip clubs,” said Agent John Perez, who oversees the North Texas Trafficking Task Force, part of Homeland Security Investigations. “But there’s a lot of demand in the suburbs.”
This is the second extensive commercial sex sting operation in North Texas suburbs in recent months. Police have arrested 23 people following an investigation at short-term rentals in Plano and Dallas.
In addition to the trafficking task force, agencies included the Arlington, Colleyville, Dallas, Flower Mound, Frisco, Irving and Midlothian police departments, Collin County, Dallas County and Tarrant County sheriff’s departments and the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office.
The operation coincided with the Department of Homeland Security’s Blue Campaign to highlight Human Trafficking Prevention Month, which is in January.
“The victims of these heinous crimes are treated like commodities, used to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible,” Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn said in a statement. “Those who traffic victims are the scourge of the earth, and we will continue to target those responsible for the trafficking and those who solicit sex from them.”
Awareness of sexual trafficking and exploitation have grown immensely in recent years, heightened by a handful of high-profile cases. Last year, a 15-year-old girl disappeared from a Dallas Mavericks game at American Airlines Center and was found a few days later in Oklahoma City; three people were arrested on charges of human trafficking.
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, co-wrote legislation with Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar to reauthorize the Abolish Human Trafficking Act, which provides tens of millions of dollars to law enforcement and social-service agencies to combat sexual exploitation. The law went into effect earlier this month.
