Ex-cops lead O. More photos. T he stocky man with a goatee walks across the darkened parking lot of the motel and bangs on the door to Room The girl inside is wearing black lingerie and looks like she did in the online ad that caught his eye β a teenager using the name Candy Green in a bathtub filled with bubbles. Reese reaches into the pocket of his tan cargo shorts and pulls out a latex condom. There's a phone number scribbled on one side in black marker.
He hands it to her. For 20 years, Reese, 43, patrolled the streets of Huntington Beach. As a police officer, he ran into his share of prostitutes. In his mind, the women were lowlifes who were selling their bodies.
He remembered one who had been beaten up by a customer. Greg Reese enters the hotel room of a woman he contacted through the Internet. Once inside, Reese made a 5-minute pitch to the woman to see if she was interested in leaving the business. Before he left, she let him pray with her. On a Sunday at church, he heard a woman give a sermon about prostitution and human trafficking. Modern-day slavery, the woman called it. Reese, who retired from the force in because of a back injury, was shocked.
Before long, he met Kevin Brown, a retired Santa Ana police officer turned pastor. Brown had gathered a Christian group of volunteers now called Safe Passage OC to conduct unofficial stings to "liberate" women and minors from a life of servitude. For Reese, who had started a private investigation firm, Brown's work seemed like a calling from above. When Brown invited Reese to come out with the group, he didn't know what to expect. Was it going to be a bunch of renegade do-gooders?
But once he joined, he saw the missions as undercover police operations β with a dash of prayer. Reese was once again patrolling the same streets he worked as an officer. This time around, though, his purpose wasn't to arrest the bad guys.
