Bremerton is a city of approximately 44,000 residents in Washington state. It is situated across Puget Sound from Seattle in Kitsap County, WA. It is home to the Puget Sound Naval Base, a major U.S. Navy base in the city which has provided a large, disproportionately male, military population. This has resulted in a large demand for commercial sex in the city. Reports of prostitution and sex trafficking in the city date back to the late 1930s. Such activity generates numerous complaints to police, and ancillary crimes such as violence, weapons, and drug offenses. For example, in May 2018, a man was sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison for robbing men who showed up at a Bremerton motel expecting to meet a prostituted woman. The man was convicted by a Kitsap County Superior Court jury of first-degree robbery and first-degree unlawful possession of a firearm.

To combat commercial sex – and its related crimes – in the city, the Bremerton Police Department has historically focused primarily on “supply side” tactics, using male police decoys posing as male sex buyers to apprehend prostituted women. The prostituted persons arrested usually face minimal jail time, are given health evaluations, and must adhere to a permanent directive to Stay Out of Areas with Prostitution (SOAP). Bremerton police officers report that the department has also conducted a handful of reverse stings using female decoys posing as prostituted women in order to arrest male sex buyers. However, arrested male sex buyers have not been included in the SOAP ordinance.

Although reverse stings in the city appear to be infrequent and/or rarely publicized, an anti-sex trafficking operation conducted in April 2013 resulted in the arrest of two male sex buyers. In that same year, following the arrest of several individuals for allegedly sex trafficking one woman and two underage girls, Bremerton investigators reviewed the “text messages, phones, and internet records” of the suspects and uncovered the names of two men who had contacted them to purchase commercial sex. Both men were charged with “hiring a juvenile prostitute for sex,” and had their names released the public. When asked about the operation, a police representative stated that “this kind of activity will not be tolerated in our community, and [the BPD] will aggressively investigate anyone involved in exploiting kids… the young girls are victims, and the pimps, their adult employees, and the johns are nothing but predatory criminals.”

In 2014, the Bremerton Police Department conducted a web-based reverse sting operation focused on apprehending sex buyers and sex traffickers/pimps. Women contacted during the investigation were not charged, but instead received victim-centered resources. Six individuals were arrested for human trafficking related charges. Two of the arrested offenders were men who had attempted to solicit sex from minors online. One of the arrested offenders was charged with promoting sexual abuse of a minor and the other was charged with human trafficking, promoting commercial sex abuse of a minor, and rape of a child.

In the 1990s, Bremerton police undertook a “Dear John” letter writing campaign targeting sex buyers. In 1997, a BPD officer proposed and drafted a standard form letter to be sent by the city to the homes of individuals seen idling in their vehicles in areas known for high rates of prostitution activity. The letter, which included the date and time of the sighting, did not directly accuse the vehicle’s owner of any improprieties, but instead merely noted that officers had taken down the individual’s plate number due to suspected prostitution activity. Subsequent media reports suggest that city police distributed the letters for at least one year. It is unclear if the tactic is still used at present.