Seattle police have clarified that a group of arrests made over the weekend came from an undercover operation in West Seattle, not from a crackdown along Aurora Avenue, after an online post created confusion among the public.
The department's original post, published on its website, told the public that a Weekend Aurora Outreach had resulted in 13 women and children receiving services and six suspects arrested, language that suggested the arrests were tied to Aurora Avenue.
According to the report, that post was misleading, because the arrests did not actually happen on Aurora Avenue. The post was later changed, and the mention of Aurora was eventually removed from the headline after confusion and questions.
The arrests, the report says, came from a net nanny operation carried out by the Seattle Police Department together with the King County Sheriff's Office in West Seattle. Detectives posed as minors during the operation, and the men are accused of trying to arrange sex with minors.
Police and prosecutors stressed that the details matter because city leaders have been under major pressure to arrest and address pimps accused of sex-trafficking women and children along Aurora Avenue.
Fed-up neighbors in the area have repeatedly taken to the streets to protest, not only over the prostitution itself but also over the shootings that residents say are connected to it.
The men taken into custody in the West Seattle operation are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court. The outreach component, the department said, connected 13 women and children with support services.