Reporting from Oakland β As midnight approached, Sylvia Vigil pulled her van over along International Boulevard, her eyes locked onto the teenager leaning against a storefront. Wearing beige shorts and sandals, her dirty blonde hair teased back into a ponytail, the young woman could easily have been mistaken for a college freshman. But Vigil knew why she was there.
She knew why the man circling the block in a beat-up car was there too. The investigator had only been accused of having inappropriate conversations with the girl. She recommended a ministry a few blocks away where there would be a shower, a hot meal, help.
Vigil walked back to her van, hopeful the teenager would call in a day or two. Within seconds, the man in the dilapidated Cutlass came back, and she slid into the passenger seat.
It was along the thoroughfare that another teenage trafficking victim alleges she met an Oakland officer, the first of more than a dozen city cops she says she had sex with, some of whom tipped her off about planned prostitution raids in the area. The teen also has said she slept with officers and deputies from at least four other East Bay law enforcement agencies. Some of the encounters, she said, happened while she was underage.
Law enforcement agencies in Alameda County have made trafficking enforcement a top priority in recent years, creating a task force spearheaded by Dist. Nancy E. From January to May, Oakland police made arrests connected to trafficking, department records show. A police spokesman said the arrests enabled police to get sex-trade victims off the streets.
