Davenport is a city on the eastern edge of Iowa on the Mississippi River.  Davenport is the county seat of Scott County, and has a population of just over 100,000.  Prostitution and child sex trafficking have been well-documented problems in the city for decades, and in some cases there has been extreme violence associated with local commercial sex.  For example, in 2007 an Iowa car salesman hired a pregnant woman for prostitution, then strangled her and burned her body with gasoline before dumping her corpse in a rural field where it was discovered by a farmer 10 days later. During court proceedings it was revealed that the defendant told a friend that he had a penchant for choking women during sex and downplayed his behavior by saying “they’re just prostitutes.”

Among the tactics used to curtail the local prostitution market and its ancillary crimes have been those targeting consumer level demand.  For example, Davenport police have conducted street level reverse stings using undercover female police officers, in an effort to reduce consumer level demand. They have also conducted prostitution stings and disrupted human trafficking rings in the area. The names, ages, and photos of those arrested are released by police to the media.