The Montgomery County police department is now in the business of running escort websites to catch the potential customers who use them.
Police said in a statement Monday that the department’s vice section, through plea agreements, “is now operating legitimate Internet sites where ‘johns’ are currently providing place of employment, and contact numbers as if they are communicating with the now defunct service. These contacts are being utilized to arrange ‘john stings’ and identify individuals on the demand side of human trafficking.”
The taking over of the escort websites is one of several initiatives the county’s police department says it’s employing to crack down on human trafficking. Officers are also reaching out to sex trafficking victims to encourage them to report crimes committed against them.
Police also say they’ve successfully infiltrated The Erotic Review, a website that enables users to share information about prostitution and rate prostitutes.
