Prostitution Sting Leads To 8 Arrests

A prostitution advertisement put out by Grand Forks police results in 30 to 40 responses and eight arrests. Police are cracking down on prostitution in the area and are making it a priority. These arrests follow a recent similar case in Bismarck where 17 people were arrested.

Grand Forks police put out an advertisement on a website called backpage.com and did not expect to get the results that they did.
Backpage.com is a website where people all over the country can find music, real estate, and escorts.

“We thought we’d throw it out there and see if we got any feedback off our backpage advertisement,” said Lt. Dwight Love of Grand Forks police.

After Grand Forks police had their ad up for just one day, they received dozens of responses.

Eight men showed up at a local motel to meet the supposed “escort”, only to find police waiting.

“We’re a little bit surprised that we got that many responses,” Love said.

And because of the quick success, this won’t be the last sting.

“Certainly that’s something that we’re trying to prevent so it’s something we’re going to focus our enforcement action on,” said Love.

Police say putting their focus on prostitution could lead them to bigger issues like sex trafficking.

“We’re trying to protect the negative effects of prostitution in the area and in the state and some of those effects are human trafficking and drug use that’s associated with this type of activity,” Love said.

Grand Forks residents had mixed reaction.

“For Grand Forks, I don’t know, it’s such a nice town you wouldn’t expect it,” said a UND student.

“I’m not that surprised. I think it’s a lot of these types of things are going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about. But I hate to see it happening in Grand Forks,” said one Grand Forks resident.

The eight men were arrested on charges of hiring an individual to engage in sexual activity. It’s a class B misdemeanor but police say embarrassment is the biggest punishment.