'Operation Fast Track' cracks down on pimps, johns

He drove from Renton, believing he was coming to Seattle to pick up a 17-year-old girl who had agreed to work for him as a prostitute.

But it was all a ruse: The girl was in fact an undercover Seattle police officer.

She approached his red Chevy Suburban in a gas-station parking lot at the corner of 12th Avenue and Jefferson Street just before 4 p.m. Monday and gave the signal her fellow cops had been waiting hours to see.

As an arrest team moved in, the undercover officer was whisked away and the suspected pimp, a man in his mid-40s, was arrested at gunpoint, placed in the back of an unmarked cruiser and driven to police headquarters to be interviewed by detectives.

The man was one of dozens of people caught up in "Operation Fast Track," a six-month-long Seattle police investigation focused on putting a crimp in the lucrative prostitution market — much of it controlled by street gangs — that's concentrated in a six-block area near Seattle Center.

Known simply as "the track," the area — bounded by Fifth Avenue, Denny Way, Aurora Avenue North and Thomas Street — is a cruising ground for johns on Friday and Saturday nights, according to police. It's also a spot where pimps go to recruit girls and young women who frequent an all-ages dance club and a recently closed nightclub in the neighborhood.

Detectives "obtained arrest warrants or have probable cause to arrest 38 people right now, but we're actually investigating another 70," Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel said. Officers began executing the warrants for pimps, johns and prostitutes Monday, and by 10 p.m. had arrested 11 suspects. Another two had previously been arrested by other agencies. Additional arrests are expected Tuesday.

The investigation was launched back in late December, after police noticed a significant increase in prostitution activities in the area. For the past six months, surveillance teams staked out the area, questioning prostitutes and stopping pimps and johns as they drove off, Pugel said. Two youthful-looking female officers were sent to the track to work as decoys, including the officer involved in Monday's gas-station takedown.

"Prostitution has been here forever, but it was the intensity of it," Pugel said. The men looking to buy sex came from all over, he said: "We had people coming up from Oregon, people from British Columbia, and people just passing through."

As for the pimps, Pugel said most are locals who live in the Greater Seattle area.

"Once you start allowing too much activity, and it goes unabated, you get a lot of violence," Pugel said.

He pointed to a trio of related shootings in the spring: In late March, a fight between pimps broke out over control of a young prostitute. After two nonfatal shootings, one near Seattle Center, the other on Capitol Hill, Mario Spearman, the suspected shooter in one of the incidents, was hit by a spray of bullets from an AK-47 as his Cadillac idled at a SeaTac intersection on April 6. He died five days later. Four men, all in their early 20s, have since been charged with first-degree murder in connection with Spearman's death.

Then there are the girls and young women, who face threats and violence from pimps and johns alike, said Pugel, pointing out that "all the studies done all over the world" indicate that the vast majority of prostitutes were physically, sexually or psychologically abused at home long before they became sex workers.

"We may not be able to prevent the physical and sexual abuse that drives them into this life," but "we can hold accountable" the people who make money "off their misery," he said.

Gang unit Sgt. Jim Dyment, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, sat in a minivan parked on 13th Avenue, waiting for the Renton pimp to show up.

He explained that the female officer had met the man on the track last week and he had given her his phone number. On Monday, she called him, saying she'd just been released from the King County juvenile detention center on 14th Avenue and needed a ride.

"He made it very clear he'll turn her out," Dyment said, using a street term that means getting a girl to work as a prostitute. "He asked if she was showered up and clean because he's planning to take her down to Vegas right away."

Prostitution, Dyment said, is "a burgeoning business for the gangs." Through interviews with a number of girls, Dyment said he's learned that many are required to make several hundred dollars a night — money that gets turned over to the pimps, most of whom have three or four girls working for them.

Pimps, Dyment said, "prey on the girl's weakness, whatever it might be. These guys are dangerous guys."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com