These are the men & women to thank for rescuing 27 Adult & 28 juvenile females, and attesting 36 suspected traffickers & 142 “Johns” @LASDHQ pic.twitter.com/rR67pED7Ih— Jim McDonnell (@LACoSheriff) January 31, 2017
The bust was part of a statewide operation to combat human trafficking, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced Tuesday. According to KTLA, more than 30 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and task forces, as well as the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force, participated in the third annual “Operation Reclaim and Rebuild” enforcement operation, according to a sheriff’s news release.
Additionally, 28 commercially and sexually exploited children and 27 adult victims were rescued.
“You are worthy of more. And we will work tirelessly with our partners … to provide you services and help you rebuild your life,” Sheriff Jim McDonnell said, addressing the victims during a news conference on Tuesday.The minors who were recovered during the operation were being cared for by various children and family services agencies across the state, according to sheriff’s officials. The Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking and the Saving Innocence organization were coordinating efforts to help victims in L.A. County.
“Operation Reclaim and Rebuild focused on rescuing victims of sexual slavery and human trafficking, providing victims with much-needed services, identifying and arresting their captors, seeking successful prosecutions, and disrupting the demand for vulnerable victims by targeting their customers,” the release stated.It is important to note that some of these arrests included people trying to simply pay another willing adult to have sex with them.
In the Land of the Free, it is against the law to get paid to have sex, unless that sex is filmed, distributed on DVD, and taxed. One of the least talked about systems of oppression in the US is that of persecuting prostitutes.
That being said, however, during the operation, officers rescued 28 children who were being sexually exploited and offered services to 27 adults they said were victims of sex trafficking. These victims were not part of a voluntary process and instead were bought and sold as commodities to sick individuals without their consent.
As corporate media writes off talk of ‘pizzagate’ as if it’s some tinfoil conspiracy theory that couldn’t possibly happen, this scenario shatters their claims. In fact, Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell says the arrests represent a “very sad commentary on the condition we’re dealing with.”
“Pretending this issue doesn’t exist only makes us more complicit in it,” newly elected San Diego City Attorney Mara Elliott said.
While it is currently unknown if any of these charges involve high-level government officials or law enforcement, the fact that it existed should not be ignored. Throughout the first and second weeks of December, since the mainstream media first reported that Edgar Maddison Welch, of Salisbury, N.C., fired a shot inside the Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria in Washington, DC, the mainstream media has been declaring the so-called child-sex “Pizzagate” child-sex ring, a false conspiracy theory based on lies.
Welch was reportedly searching for child-sex slaves inside Comet Ping Pong based on stories he’d read online involving pedophilia and the Washington elite. Ironically, and without any real investigative, Chris Hanson style journalism being conducted, the mainstream media and its pundits have declared all the claims found in the conspiracy theory to be false, lies constructed by “fake news.”
In fact, The Washington Post simply declared, “None of them were true.” That may, indeed, be the case. But if it can happen in California on such a large scale, it can certainly happen anywhere else in the United States, and all such claims must be investigated thoroughly by properly trained police officers with the tools necessary to uncover such deviant sex crimes involving children. We applaud the California authorities for their investigations of child-sex rings. May justice be swift to the sickos involved in exploiting children.