Prostitution

Police in Anne Arundel county arrested an Arizona woman last week for prostitution after they found her in a Linthicum hotel room with condoms and over $1,000 in cash while executing a search warrant. The woman, a 29-year-old from Phoenix, is scheduled to face trial on a charge of prostitution in December. Officers in the county's vice unit searched the hotel on Nov. 18, around 9:30 p.m. after receiving numerous complaints of prostitution taking place at the hotel, according to a statement released by police Monday morning.

Five illegal immigrants living in Maryland have been federally charged in connection with a prostitution ring that ran brothels in Annapolis and Easton, among other state locations, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced Tuesday. Charged in the criminal complaint are: German de Jesus Ventura, 32, of Capitol Heights; Kerlin Esau Esquivel-Feuntes, 23, of Annapolis; and Luis Alberto Reyes, 28, Isidro Jiminez-Sanchez, 32, and Wibert Alejandro Herrera-Aranda, 32, all of Easton.

In its sixth "reverse" prostitution sting of the year, Howard County Police arrested 15 men accused of soliciting prostitutes, the department announced Monday. On Friday, 15 female officers worked in plain clothes in Laurel along the U.S. 1 corridor, waiting to be approached. Men who offered the officers money for sex were arrested, police said. The following men were charged with solicitation of a prostitute: Hugo Alvizures-Gramajo, 37, of Alexandria, Va.; Enrique Claros-Lara, 30, of Laurel; Carlos Hernan Estebos-Escobar, 27, of Laurel; Antonio Garcia Jr., 59, of Humble, Texas; William P. Garcia, 29, of Laurel; Robert Earl Jackson, 53, of Dundalk; Hassan Jameel Jones, 29, of Oklahoma City, Okla.

Thirteen men, including five illegal immigrants, are facing charges after being caught in a Howard County police prostitution sting on U.S. 1 in Jessup Friday. Police said they spent five hours along the highway near Route 175 using undercover female officers and detectives in the fifth anti-prostitution sting this year along different parts of U.S. 1. Police said they were responding to citizen complaints and arrested only men who approached the female officers and offered money for sex. Five of those arrested were turned over to federal immigration authorities for allegedly being in the country illegally.

Anne Arundel County officials are increasing enforcement efforts in the Laurel area in hopes of curbing prostitution and sex trafficking. The announcement of the crackdown comes after two arrests this week of men suspected of peddling teenagers for sex while holding them against their will at Laurel hotels. Officials said they hope the effort — dubbed "Operation Escape," which seeks cooperation from hotel and motel operators, with the threat of other county agencies descending on them if they won't help — will net results.

A federal charge of sex trafficking of a minor was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore against a man initially charged in Anne Arundel County with holding a 12-year-old girl as a prostitute, and supporting documents allege he threatened her. The girl told officers with the Maryland Human Trafficking Task Force that Derwin Smith, 42, took her to a big vacant house he promised would be hers if she worked for him, and then brought her...

Howard County police have arrested 27 men in two prostitution stings this year, according to a news release. On Wednesday, police arrested 11 men on Route 1 near Whiskey Bottom Road in Laurel. They also arrested 16 men at the same location March 19 during another sting. The men all approached undercover female police officers posing as prostitutes and offered them money for sex. According to police, two of the men — Camilio Victor Herrera-Castillo, 25, of Odenton, and Amador Eullogio Lopez-Rosario, 35, of Laurel — were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for being in the country illegally.

Police have made an arrest in a deadly October stabbing that occurred after a dispute in a car near a park in East Baltimore. Larry Douglas, 20, of Baltimore has been charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing of Darren Neal Green Jr., 25, of the first block of N. Woodington Road in Southwest Baltimore. Police found the wounded Green wearing women's clothing in the 1500 block of Montpelier St., near Adams Park, in the Coldstream-Homestead-Montebello neighborhood about 5 a.m. Oct. 26. A counselor said she knew Green as "Dee," and that Green identified as a woman.

He graduated from a Catholic high school and attended college; she joined the Army. But somewhere along the line, police believe, Shaun Henderson and his girlfriend began crisscrossing the Baltimore region as a fledgling pimp and his prostitute. On Feb. 4, in the area for an appointment at a Towson hotel, Henderson, 30, was found shot to death in his 2000 Cadillac Escalade parked in North Baltimore's Greenspring neighborhood. Baltimore police say at least two women were seen running from the vehicle.