A brothel discovered in a house in Walnut led to an extended investigation, the rescue of various victims and the arrest of numerous human trafficking suspects, authorities announced Tuesday.
Details of the investigation were shared at a morning news conference in downtown Los Angeles by Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna, Los Angeles Police Department Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton and District Attorney Nathan Hochman.
Operation Reclaim and Rebuild, a weeklong statewide crackdown on human trafficking, resulted in hundreds of suspects being arrested and adult and juvenile female victims being rescued, including one who is just 13 years old, officials said. The arrests and rescues were made by the L.A. Regional Human Trafficking task force, which also seized a number of firearms.
Luna said more than 600 arrests had been made and more than 150 adults and 14 children were rescued statewide. In Los Angeles County, 12 adults and five children were rescued.
The Walnut brothel house was the subject of a citizen complaint, Luna said.
Months of “surveillance and information gathering” and the service of multiple search warrants followed, the sheriff said.
Several more residential brothels were located in Walnut, he said.
“We have traffickers that are putting barely teenage girls on the streets of Los Angeles to be victimized, repeatedly, over and over again,” Hamilton said. “These children did not come from one place. They came from Chicago, from Oklahoma, from Missouri, tribal lands … and from communities right here in the state of California.”
Hundreds of sex buyers, or “johns,” were also arrested, Luna said.
“How embarrassing that I could actually say that we have corridors of human sex trafficking throughout Los Angeles County,” Hochman said. “It’s also a dubious distinction that Los Angeles County is one of the epicenters of human sex trafficking in the entire nation. This is a multi-billion-dollar industry. It is nothing less than modern slavery.”
Dozens of agencies were involved in the crackdown.