The violent street gangs run the child sex trade thoughout the United States.
Yesterday the Chicago Police Department arrested nine individuals for their alleged roles in a "'major' human sex trafficking operation run by Vice Lords and other gang members on the South and West Sides" as reported by Rummana Hussain and Mitch Dudek for the Chicago Sun-Times: "some of the victims were as young as 12 when they were recruited to work as prostitutes."
Last month an MS-13 member was convicted for pimping out a 12-year-old girl in the Washington, D.C. area, and other reputed members from that clique are accused of involvement with the child sex racket as reported by Emily Babay for The Washington Examiner.
A major child prostitution ring allegedly run by the Oceanside Crips in North County, CA was busted last April as reported by Lindsay Hood for NBC:
During the investigation, detectives found 30 female minors who claimed they were being held by the gangs against their will. * * * The gang members would target runaways or girls from broken homes. Investigators allege the gang members would often gift the women and girls to each other. The prostitutes would be punished through physical violence if they disobeyed their pimps.
In October 2010 the feds indicted 29 men and women for their alleged roles in decade-long interstate child sex trafficking operation run by Minneapolis, MN-based Somalian street gangs which forced girls as young as twelve into prostitution as reported by the Star Tribune.
California Assemblyman Marty Block said street gang members "are recruiting teenage girls for prostitution in schools and 'selling them over and over'" as reported by KPBS: "Where drugs can only be sold once, girls are a 'renewable resource for gangs,' he said."
Sex trafficking in women and children is the second biggest racket – behind drugs – for organized crime and street gangs in the United States which provides annual revenue of $9 billion, and the FBI estimates more than 100 criminal groups have their dirty hands in the illicit trade which use strips clubs, massage parlors and Craigslist and other web sites to peddle their product.
The gang bangers may be violent but there's nothing tough about them.
Further reading that may be of interest:
