White Plains is a city of approximately 60,000 residents, located north of New York City, and it is the county seat of Westchester County, New York. Prostitution and teen sex trafficking are known to have occurred in the city. To combat consumer-level demand for commercial sex, the City of White Plains Department of Public Safety’s Neighborhood Conditions Unit conducted a street-level reverse sting in July 2007. The operation used an undercover female officer, who posed as a prostituted woman in the city’s downtown area. As sex buyers attempted to solicit sex from the officer, she directed them to meet her at a location nearby. When the men arrived, they were apprehended by a team of arresting officers. As a warning to other would-be sex buyers, police released the names, ages, and addresses of all six sex buyers to the local media.

In 2012, a White Plains man was arrested on a felony charge for offering to pay $50 to sexually abuse an undercover Westchester investigator’s fictional underage “step-daughter.” The man was arraigned on one count of second-degree attempted rape, a felony, and one count of second-degree attempted patronizing a prostitute, a misdemeanor. The Westchester District Attorney’s Office investigator pretended to be an adult male with a 13-year-old “step-daughter” in a series of alleged email conversations. The suspect allegedly wrote in the emails about sex acts he wanted to engage in with the teenage “step-daughter” in exchange for money. When the suspect showed up to a meeting and allegedly paid the undercover “step-father” $50, he was arrested, officials said. Bail was set at $5,000, and if convicted, the man faced a maximum sentence of four years in state prison.

In addition to conducting reverse sting operations, police have also engaged in opportunistic sex buyer arrests. For example, in March 2012 a man was arrested after police saw a woman with a history of prostitution getting into a gray Mazda and then later saw that same driver and woman drive by in a different vehicle. Police pulled them over and the man admitted to having sex with the woman in a parking garage for $25. The man said the woman was a friend and called him to offer the exchange of sex for money. Both were arrested, and the man was charged with patronizing prostitution.