Two people, including an 18-year-old woman, were arrested in San Diego’s North County Wednesday for prostitution, officials from the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department confirmed.
At around 8:45p.m., officials with the North County Prostitution and Human Trafficking Task Force attempted to contact Timothy Jacobs, 44, suspected of acting as a pimp to Brooke Tucker, 18, a young woman from Iowa.
Jacobs and Tucker were inside a vehicle. When officers tried to make contact with the pair, Jacobs refused to stop and allegedly rammed an officer’s car while trying to flee the scene, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department said.
Jacobs sped off, with deputies in pursuit. Eventually, he was stopped and taken into custody on suspicion of supervising an individual for the purposes of prostitution, officials said. Jacobs was also charged with felony evading of a peace officer and assault with a deadly weapon for using his vehicle to ram into a patrol car.
Meantime, Tucker was also arrested and charged with solicitation of prostitution.
Officials said no one was injured during the vehicle pursuit. Victim services were provided to Tucker via the North County Lifeline.
According to San Diego law enforcement officials, young women and teenagers are often targets for prostitution, especially by street gangs who have made human and sex trafficking a lucrative business.
Just last month, authorities busted a major sex trafficking ring involving two dozen suspected gang members and their associates in San Diego’s North Park community.
Officials said that large-scale, cross-country sex trafficking ring spanned 46 cities across 23 states and involved more than 60 victims from San Diego. A total of 11 of those victims were minors.
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Following that prostitution bust, the San Diego County’s District Attorney’s office announced that the number of human trafficking cases convicted and prosecuted in San Diego County has more than tripled over the past four years.
According to DA Bonnie M. Dumanis, under the state’s sex trafficking statutes, a total of 40 human trafficking cases were prosecuted in San Diego in 2012 – a big jump from nine cases prosecuted by the DA’s office in 2009.
