Columbia is the state capital and largest city in South Carolina, with approximately 138,000 residents. It is the county seat of Richland County. As such, anti-prostitution efforts in the city have often taken the form of joint initiatives and/or operational coordination between the Columbia Police Department and Richland County Sheriff’s Office.

Persistent street prostitution and solicitation have posed considerable problems for city residents for decades. Beginning in the mid-1970s, local law enforcement began staging street-level reverse stings to arrest sex buyers. The majority of these early operations were conducted along Two Notch Road, an area identified by residents and police as highly trafficked. The city’s first known reverse sting occurred in 1976; it resulted in the arrest of 7 sex buyers, including 5 soldiers from nearby Fort Jackson. Each arrestee was sentenced to 30 days in jail or a payment of $105 in fines.

In more recent years, the CPD and RCSO have continued to conduct street-level reverse stings on a fairly regularly basis. Operations have been ad hoc or large in scale, with an average of 10 arrests per sting. Officers have reported that many of the prostituted women and sex buyers arrested could be linked to the city’s drug market and/or have prior convictions for other crimes. In an effort to discourage arrestees from re-offending, the CPD and RCSO have at times released sex buyers’ names to the local media.

Web-based reverse stings have also been conducted in Columbia. For example, in May 2019 the Richland County Sheriff’s Department conducted a six-hour operation at a local hotel, focusing on sex buyers using various websites to search for prostitution in the Columbia area. The Sheriff thanked community partners who donated the use of a hotel room and cameras to record evidence against the suspects.

In August 2019, the former South Carolina transportation commissioner was charged with “soliciting a prostitute” after he was arrested as part of a multi-agency internet sting that sought to catch sex buyers and child predators. The man was arrested after arriving at the location where he’d agreed to meet and pay $40 to an adult he thought was a prostituted person. Instead, he had been communicating with an undercover officer over a known prostitution website. His arrest violated his probation, and he was sentenced to 18 months probation after pleading guilty to obstructing a federal investigation by telling an FBI informant to delete emails. The sentence included 45 days of home confinement and required 40 hours of community service. Another one of the men caught in the operation was a Richland County Sheriff’s Department deputy charged with soliciting a minor and attempted criminal sexual conduct with a minor. He was immediately fired and was not allowed a plea deal, and the state Criminal Justice Academy was notified so that he would never again work in law enforcement in South Carolina. The deputy was among 14 men who thought they were communicating with girls as young as 13. Five were arrested upon arriving to the agreed meeting spot. One arrested “traveler” drove 470 miles over seven hours from Florida, while another came from Georgia. Many of the men sent nude pictures as they solicited sex from a 15-year-old girl. Other sex buyers charged with soliciting a prostitute included a 42-year-old National Guardsman and a 55-year-old American Airlines pilot. A 41-year-old mechanic was additionally charged with four counts of attempted murder after he tried to run over the four officers arresting him. The operation involved 12 law enforcement agencies, including the state attorney general’s office.

Loss of employment is another consequence of buying sex that has occurred within the city. For example, in October 2011, a Columbia police officer was fired after being arrested and charged with prostitution the prior week. The Columbia Police Department initially placed the man on unpaid administrative leave while the allegations were investigated. Richland County deputies arrested the man after receiving a tip that a uniformed officer had entered a hotel room with a known prostituted person. When authorities arrived, the officer fled in his patrol car. He was arrested a few blocks down the road. The man had served as a school resource officer at W.A. Perry Middle School and had been with the Columbia Police Department since May 2009.