Expanding on my last post, here’s another thing The New York Times Magazine didn’t mention in a major story on the child prostitution crisis along Figueroa Street in South Los Angeles. It’s this, and note both the date and the name of the office:
So the Times asks, “Can Anyone Rescue the Trafficked Girls of L.A.’s Figueroa Street?” But someone has intervened in that sex trafficking of children on Figueroa, and can go on making serious arrests that are likely to lead to long prison terms for the traffickers, breaking the trade on the street. Operation Broken Blade was a cooperative effort between local and federal law enforcement:
In one of the most disturbing and far-reaching human trafficking cases in recent memory, federal and local law enforcement agencies have arrested multiple members of the Hoover Criminal Gang in Los Angeles, charging them with operating a violent sex trafficking ring that exploited girls as young as 14. The arrests were the result of a coordinated pre-dawn raid dubbed “Operation Broken Blade,” led by the U.S. Department of Justice, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD).
The 31-count federal indictment alleges that members of the gang used beatings, starvation, rape, branding, and psychological manipulation to control their victims — many of whom were minors, runaways, or in the foster care system. Prosecutors say the gang ran its operation along the notorious Figueroa Corridor, a stretch of South Los Angeles long associated with commercial sex work and human trafficking.
Criminals who traffic children can be caught and held accountable when agencies across different levels of government work as partners, disregarding political conflict and posturing. A bit earlier, a similar operation bringing together local police resources from many different agencies led to a long list of state trafficking charges from the post-Gascón Los Angeles County DA’s Office.
The New York Times story depicts a small and overwhelmed local police unit struggling to stem the tide of child prostitution in Los Angeles, but doesn’t mention that federal law enforcement has offered significant help, and has done so quite recently. The Orange Man Bad narrative exception makes the positive discussion of Trump-era federal partnership … problematic.
Similarly, the California Values Act of 2017, passed as a rebuke to Trump during his first term, forbids local police cooperation with ICE or HSI, but allows exceptions — including permissible cooperation in the event of sex crimes against children. The endless demonization of federal law enforcement by California and Los Angeles elected officials ignores the degree to which federal agencies have offered significant and sustained partnership with local officials against child sex trafficking. Idiot Mayor Karen Bass relentlessly depicts federal law enforcement agencies as cruel, hateful organizations full of bigots who just run around torturing helpless brown people for no reason, and here are some sample screenshots from that linked video:
She said all of this precisely as HSI was working to arrest people in Los Angeles who were selling children for sex, addressing an appalling problem that Bass is doing nothing to solve. These federal agencies have no plan other than fear and chaos.
By the way, about that story Bass and other Democrats told regarding a bizarre and pointless federal raid on wonderful MacArthur Park, the clean and safe paradise where children play and families have joyful picnics:
The City of Los Angeles has just decided to build a $2.3 million iron fence around the entire park, because they’ve so completely lost control of the place to drug dealers and street gangs. October 25 headline about the fence in the Los Angeles Times:
“A playground, a picnic spot, a community spot.” Right.
Elected officials in Los Angeles and California, being invested above all in their symbol performance and their Orange Man Bad ritual chanting, relentlessly assault reality, while the people they demean and demonize spend their days running down people who traffic children for sex. To offer only a partial list, Karen Bass, Eric Swalwell, and Gavin Newsom aren’t serious people, and they appear to have a total immunity to shame. They leave ruin in their wake, always and everywhere.
