Get over the idea law enforcement is here to protect as a priority. They have proven over time its just a capitalist business looking for more clients. Their job is to put as many people in jail as possible with quarterly growth.
I was in the Las Vegas airport a few weeks ago. When I went to the bathroom, on the inside of the stalls, the Las Vegas Metro Police had placed notices with a phone number saying that help for victims of human trafficking is available. I noticed several billboards around town with the same message. If this has become such a widespread problem that law enforcement has resorted to trying to contact victims in airport bathrooms on their way into town, then they need to step up efforts nail the pimps and traffickers. This shutdown of BackPage was a big step backwards in that effort.
The assumes the law enforcement is sincere in its effort. Actual story could well be:
1. Put up ads everywhere seeking to help victims so as to convince the average person the problem is huge.
2. Pass sweeping repressive measure allowing unselective seizure of sex-ad websites.
3. Profit through increased funding, influence and programs (no ??? needed).
Are support people necessarily victimizers? Is someones driver automatically their pimp? Is the realtionship better or worse if it was transacted through an app?
If someone hosts child pornography on an AWS hard drive; should Jeff Bezos go to jail for it?
There's a lot of subtlety here.
And a government that is manifestly and overtly corrupt has no business enforcing morality on people.
Our public policy needs to somehow control incentive structures of these organizations. For example, the War on Poverty has spent trillions, with no measurable reduction in poverty. The War on Drugs, Prison State, Military Industrial Complex. And it appears to be even a cultural problem: CNN tells us we need to maintain an economy of killing innocents in order to keep jobs[1]. So many things are backwards.
In other words, perhaps public policy needs to fundamentally change the way it establishes and preserves government entities, in order to ensure their incentives align with their purpose.
1 - https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-...
For the USA, there is an endemic problem with all law enforcement and there is various serious documentation about this. That is not to say that the USA is the worst, there are many other countries that have a much more deadly situation. However, for a country that is supposed to be the leaders of the free world, it is rapidly getting the reputation of being third world in this matter.
When other countries warn their citizens not to have interactions with any US law enforcement then you should realise that there is a serious problem in the USA.