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April 14, 2021 - Epoch Times
41:28
Uncovering Human Trafficking in California | Greg Jones
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I believe one of the misconceptions is that we believe that human trafficking, although it does happen internationally, the majority of the human trafficking we see at the local level, it happens right here in our own communities, in our own backyard with our own children.
How does the trafficking work?
Do they get recruited?
It's almost like fishing.
Well, they'll start casting and soon this young person will start looking at their issues as if this trackbreaker is now going to be their superhero.
And what are the signs of it?
The signs and the red flags are actually more than what people even imagine.
The media hasn't done much from uncovering this.
What are your thoughts on that?
There's been many people who have glamorized the lifestyle of prostitution or glamorized human trafficking.
At times, media promotes something that is really degrading to women, degrading to our young girls, and then sometimes I don't think we think of a bigger picture of, would we want our daughter to be doing this?
Would we promote this to our daughter?
Or even sometimes our sons, because it can happen to young men also.
So the idea of defunding police, it hits services like this, right?
When the task force and operations, they don't have the funding to do this or they don't have the personnel, it only hurts the community.
And this is a problem that affects every community, whether you're in the lower economic or you're in higher economic.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter about the race, doesn't matter about your zip code.
It affects everyone.
California is one of the largest states for human trafficking.
My guest today is Greg Jones.
He's a deputy sheriff with San Bernardino County's Sheriff's Department.
Today he discusses how human trafficking is happening within our communities and what we can do to help the victims.
Welcome to California Insider.
Thank you very much.
I am so excited to be here and I really appreciate my department appreciates that our law enforcement community appreciates the opportunity to speak about the discussion.
So I have been looking at human trafficking issue and for Orange County, California, this is a big issue.
We have 80% of people that are trafficked.
They come through Orange County from some stats that I saw.
But this issue is a local issue as well, right?
Yes, very much so.
I think, I believe one of the misconceptions is that we believe that human trafficking, although it does happen internationally, the majority of the human trafficking we see at the local level And I would say it happens right here in our own communities, in our own backyards with our own children.
How does it happen?
Tell me more.
Usually it happens with a victim, male or female.
Majority of those females, majority of the victims are younger, are juveniles, and they can come from a cross-dynamic home.
There's a lot of abuse, a broken home, whether the father or mother is in the home.
They could have had some type of prior traumatic event that happens to them.
Sometimes it can be triggered by them having a bad day or going through some issues at home or at school or outside.
And how does the trafficking work?
Do they get recruited?
Usually human trafficking starts with some type of grooming.
And what I mean by grooming is it can start as simple as something all over the internet.
A young person can post a video on their profile or some photos.
They will be contacted and the more likes they get, They want that, right?
Every young person wants words of affirmation.
They want the justification that they're important, which they are.
And unfortunately, sometimes we have a lot of youth that feel that they're unloved.
So they will seek out attention.
And what normally happens is a trafficker will, it's almost like fishing.
Well, they'll start casting, how are you doing?
It'll be okay.
I can treat you better than what's happening at home.
You're beautiful.
And they build them up.
And soon this young person will start looking at their issues as if this trafficker is now going to be their superhero, their superman or even superwoman.
And how long this process takes?
It really depends.
It depends on the situation.
It depends on the element.
It could be as simple as somebody having a relationship with somebody and then them falling on hard times.
One person can believe that if I can make some real quick money, And then they start trafficking the victim out.
Or it could be as simple as putting in an ad, a young person or even an adult, wanting to make some type of money.
And then from there, after the grooming, what happens next?
From the grooming, which is very gradual, right?
It's a relationship that is built up, but it's also a facade.
It's a false relationship.
From the grooming, they will get them, build up their trust, get them to believe that they can build an empire, they can build up this lifestyle, they can make money together.
He or she can overcome whatever issues the victims have, they are going to be their savior.
And then once they do that, they have their hooks into them, and then they basically prostitute them out.
It goes even to the point where the victim can feel some type of negative experience, shame.
And the trafficker will either threaten them saying, if you don't do this, I'm going to hurt your family.
I'm going to go after your mom, your dad, your sister, your brother.
I'm going to post your pictures online and I'm going to shame you through social media.
I'm going to post everything out so that you can feel that you are insuperior, that you are inferior, that you are the one that this is your fault.
And shame them into a life.
And then once they get their hooks into them, now they have them.
And does this happen in schools, in the community, in normal places we know?
Yes.
It happens in schools.
It happens in your regular home life.
It can happen at a two-parent home.
It can happen in a one-parent home.
One of the major breeding grounds for human trafficking when it comes to juveniles is our foster and youth homes.
And unfortunately, some of these homes, and it's nobody, it's no one's independent fault, but sometimes these are already kids that have been abused, emotionally broke, physically broke, and the kids are then kind of forced into a situation that they may not want to be.
Because kids are like anybody else.
They want to feel loved.
They want to feel the support.
And if they're not getting that at home because something happened, they're taken away from their parents for whatever situation.
Now, if you have somebody from the outside giving them a little bit of attention, now that's the hook.
You mentioned social media profiles.
Can you tell us more about ways that people get contacted online?
Yes.
Online right now has been increasing for the past year because of COVID and everything.
A lot of the youth, a lot of kids are virtual with school, but they're also going on to the gaming systems.
And essentially when you're on live, no matter what platform, either the PS platform or the Xbox platform, or if you're on the PC platform, you can virtually talk to anybody in the world.
And the unfortunate side of that, you don't know who you're talking to.
So when they go on to the video games or even through social media, The person they're talking to usually is not who they think they are.
You can be in your mid-40s or 50s, 60s and create a profile and show that you are a 16, 17, 14-year-old young lady or a young boy.
It really is up to you.
But the bad side is when the kids see this, they start a relationship, they start communication, they start to trust.
There's been cases nationwide where sexual predators have contacted these young girls in other states.
They've actually traced it, followed them, watched the predator or the young lady attempt to get on a plane, go from the East Coast to the West Coast.
They set up a sting here on the West Coast for the predator.
Once he shows up, they take him into custody because he solicited this young girl to fly out, pays for her ticket to come to California.
For our youth today dealing with social media, they all want the accolades.
They want the affirmation that they are special.
Um, they may have 6,000, 40,000, 60,000 friends, um, or likes, but most people don't know 60 or 40,000 people.
Most people don't even know 2,000 people, um, let alone 200 people.
Um, so that's one of the things that the predators are doing now and the traffickers are doing now is they're reaching out through social media.
Um, things like TikTok and as innocent as TikTok looks like, and everybody wants to see the latest dance craze, um, Do you really want to see a 12-year-old, 11-year-old young lady moving and dancing the way that they do sometimes, right?
But we look at that and we think it's innocent.
A trafficker looks at that and say, that's my next product.
I'm going to reach out to them.
I can offer her a contract to make a video or to be in a magazine.
And they start up a relationship.
And this young person, all they think about is, I want to be the next superstar.
I want to be the next person who's out there.
I want to be the next media sensation.
And they're not looking at it in long term, that what they're doing is actually they're being groomed.
And what age, you mentioned kids, what age are the people that are usually trafficked?
In our county, San Bernardino County, they've seen kids as young as 12.
So the average is between 12 to 14.
I believe the national average to that I've seen recently was actually about 17 years of age.
So I think it really depends on the area that you are living in and the environment.
But I would say the age is between 12 to 14.
And how can the victims get out of it?
Is there a way for them out once they are in this?
The average contacts when our task force go out and they make contact with these victims, the average amount of contacts is between 12 to 15 contacts.
And it's something that the victim has already caught up into a certain lifestyle.
Majority of the time it's not a lifestyle they want to be a part of, but they feel threatened, they feel intimidated, they're scared to come out of that lifestyle.
And what happens is when we're able to offer them services through wraparound programs or contacts and a lot of trust, And relationships that is built up, positive relationships, we're able to get them out of that situation.
There's a lot of work.
For example, in law enforcement, once we come across a case that we believe there is a suspected human trafficking case, right, that law enforcement will get the juvenile or even the adult out of that, will initially, immediately offer them services.
In San Bernardino County, we work with an organization called Open Door.
In Riverside County, we work with an organization called Run to Rescue.
We contact these organizations and we essentially start the process.
If we can get them out of the environment that they're in, get social services involved, identify their trafficker, hopefully start a case on the trafficker so we can arrest them, so they can stop doing this to other people, then that kind of gets the ball rolling.
We really want to emphasize that this is a problem, a systemic problem that can happen in any culture, any community.
And the biggest thing is getting them resources that they need.
Resources like a driver's license or identification card, their birth certificates, getting them back on track with their education.
Getting them some type of full-time employment, getting them housing, whatever we can do.
So how do you find these victims?
The victims are usually contacted from what we have seen through operations, through word of mouth, sometimes through family.
It takes, like I said, it takes between 12 to 15 contacts.
That's just talking to them, coming in contact with them, right?
If they're a juvenile, it makes it a little bit easier to get them out of that lifestyle, at least assist.
If they're 18 and over, it's not so simple because they're an adult.
They have their own free will for the most part.
A lot of times they're being controlled by the trafficker, but a lot of other times they're not.
The goal for us is to get them into positions where they can be independent.
Can you give us some examples of cases that you guys have seen and you've been able to get them out of that lifestyle?
Yes.
For instance, a case that I worked a few years ago.
I was working on a regular patrol aspect.
I came across, I responded to a fight call.
And at the fight call, it was in the parking lot of a motel.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
I thought it was a regular fight call.
I show up.
Everybody is gone.
But a gentleman That was hiding behind some cars.
There was a cell phone on the ground.
Nobody was around the cell phone.
I picked up the cell phone because I thought I didn't know whose it was.
I opened the cell phone up, started looking.
It was nothing but sex ads.
He came out from one of the cars.
He said he identified that being his phone.
I asked him, well, how can you tell me?
He said, well, my name's on it.
And that started everything.
For me, at that time, I had no idea it was human trafficking because I had to do an additional investigation.
I went back to the same location, same motel, the next day.
The room that he identified that everybody was in, I knocked on the door.
And inside the room, there was five males and two females.
Two of the females were juveniles.
One of the females was a juvenile that I was looking for a year before because she was a runaway juvenile.
And her family at that time, and I remember this explicitly because of the fact that when she gave me her name, after long talking to her because she didn't really want to identify herself, her name stuck out at me.
And I knew the city that I was working, I inherently knew it was her.
And then she told me she was in Vegas, she was here in Orange County, she was in Riverside, she was in LA, she was down in San Diego.
And the suspects, who we arrested all four of them, took her all over the place.
Her and the other young lady, who was actually from Las Vegas.
And so, somebody like her, she was groomed, and she was recruited, and then she was doing this on her own will, in a sense, but she was threatened, right?
Yes.
Initially, she started off, because I know her backstory.
With this case, her mother was deceased.
Her father was actually a long-haul truck driver.
She was actually staying with her grandmother.
She had a twin sister, and while her father was out working, her grandmother would watch over she and her sister.
She started talking to the wrong young men.
She started putting her photos out there, looking for the additional attention.
She was lacking support, lacking love.
Even though her grandmother and her sister was trying to tell her that she's going to be okay, they had a strong family relationship.
She was looking for the affirmation, a positive affirmation, in all the wrong places.
And it took just that.
She was introduced to somebody who promised her all these things, started buying her clothes, buying her shoes, buying her Tiffany bracelets, coach purses.
And for a young lady who's 14 years of age, I don't know of any young lady who can afford a Tiffany bracelet.
I can't even afford my wife to get a Tiffany bracelet, right?
But she had all these things going on.
And she was living at home where they did not have a lot of money.
But this one person was offering her all these things.
And to a juvenile, they're not seeing the bigger picture.
All they see is this person is filling a void.
So the person that she was talking to, was that person, she was 14, right?
Yes.
Was that person over 18 or was that younger?
No, he was over 18.
He was 19 at the time.
And because he was 19, we were able to arrest him for what he was doing.
That small case, that small contact, I remember being on patrol.
I reached out to our human trafficking task force and I said, I believe I have some type of suspected human trafficking.
I have an idea.
Now looking back, I without a doubt had a case, but initially I didn't realize I did.
Even though I was trained on the identification of child abuse, I was trained on the identification of what a victim, what I believe what a victim looks like for human trafficking.
But it wasn't until I actually had a case myself and I dove into the case that at that time I realized there was more there than what met the eye.
And so something like this can happen in a normal family.
And what are the signs of it, that somebody's going through that?
The signs are actually, the signs and the red flags are actually more than what people even imagine.
If kids are starting to pull back, right?
And sometimes, as juveniles, their homeowners change.
Adolescence, teenage years.
If you have a child, male or female, and they start hanging around with the wrong group, they start having two cell phones.
If their clothes change, they're wanting to wear very revealing clothes or clothes that are not really age appropriate.
If they're putting all their information on social media, if they have a ghost profile, and a ghost profile is a profile that for a mom or dad, they may see their child on social media, but they're going to have an alternative profile, one that's a little bit more out there, a little bit more mature.
It could be as simple as getting into an argument continuous with the families, the child feeling that they are disassociated from everything.
It could be something that if it's an adult, that person could be they lose their income, their job.
It could be just almost anything, any traumatic experience.
It doesn't matter about if it's a two-parent home or a one-parent home.
It doesn't matter about their culture.
It doesn't matter about their religious beliefs.
It doesn't matter about their sexual orientation.
It doesn't matter about who they love.
Every person has the opportunity, unfortunately, to be victimized with human trafficking.
And how can people help people like that?
If they see somebody in their family, how can they deal with it?
I would definitely say, from a law enforcement standpoint, get in their business.
If it's your child, if it's your loved one or your niece or your child's friend, find out really what's going on with them.
Ask them basic questions like, how are you doing?
Check their cell phones.
At least know the password to the cell phone.
Become friends with them on social media.
Kind of monitor.
We want to believe that our children are doing the right thing, but at the same time, we still have to keep and hold them accountable.
I believe that our job is to be their parent, not always necessarily their best friend.
It's nice to be best friends with your kids, but at some point in time you have to be their parent.
And I think that if we really get into, you start looking at what the kids are doing, who they're hanging out with, holding them accountable.
Really getting to know the child.
And if they're an adult, if you see a change in their behavior, change in their clothes, if there's some type of addiction to a substance or drugs, really try to reach out.
The stigma that we're going to keep things private.
I don't want to share.
I don't want to tell that person.
I don't want to shame them.
You do not have to tell them.
Reach out to your local law enforcement.
Ask questions.
Attend training.
Look at some human trafficking videos.
Get to know the signs and the symptoms of human trafficking and when someone is being victimized.
And you mentioned the victims don't come forward easily, right?
Why is that?
A lot of times it's either out of pressure or they feel shame or they're intimidated by their trafficker.
This is a trafficker.
There's a lot of mental manipulation, sometimes even physical abuse.
Your trafficker, or also known as your pimps, there's your Romeo pimp, who's very cunning, very nice, a lot of manipulation.
He's not going to come out and say and give you all the wrong things.
He or she is going to build you up.
They're going to make it seem like they are the Superman or Superwoman.
They are going to save you from your situation.
And also you have what's called a gorilla pimp who is very much hands-on, very abusive.
They will use tactics like branding where they physically will brand something on their victim, right?
Because they treat them like cattle.
They treat them as if they're a commodity or they tattoo them.
And it's very familiar or it's very common for your pimps, your traffickers, to brand or tattoo their name or their symbol or a money symbol or a bag or some type of tattoo on their body to symbolize that that person or even a barcode, that person belongs to him or her.
Wow.
Because they don't look at that person as a human being.
They look at that person as a commodity.
They look at that person as a slave.
That that person belongs to me.
They have no rights to anything.
Everything you do, you better ask permission.
Everything you do, I have to give permission to you.
No matter how much money or what commodities or anything that you might make is mine.
And I'm going to give you everything you need.
So that makes the victim feel that they have no power whatsoever.
It basically strips every point of their identity away from them.
And they're afraid of coming to you guys, right?
Oh, they're terrified.
They are completely terrified.
I've seen victims that our task force has worked with, has worked with, has worked with, and after long periods of time, they finally will come forward after a lot of trust.
The unfortunate side is in law enforcement, we have not always been the most supportive of victims of human trafficking, unfortunately, and that's a reality.
When the law was really changed back in 2017, 2018, a lot of the victims that we would identify as juveniles at the time, we would cite that if the victim was 15, 16, 17 years of age, we would cite them, which essentially means that we would arrest them.
They would have to go to juvenile court.
They would have a juvenile public defender or a private attorney, and they would start a criminal process.
That whole mentality has changed.
The loss has changed for the most positive way.
Because most juveniles, they really don't have the right to make a decision on whether or not to have sex for number one.
Two, they're not mentally ready to make a decision.
And three, they can be manipulated easily.
And there's a lot of trauma involved.
And because of that trauma, we want to be able to use wraparound services to give them everything they possibly can.
The law that you mentioned makes, considers everyone over 14 an adult.
Is that how it works?
Yes.
The law actually, and I don't remember exactly, it's PC647. I do not remember the subsection at the top of my head.
But the law essentially says that The solicitation for somebody who is a minor, if the minor is over the age of 14, is considered still a misdemeanor.
And our task force is trying to get it changed into a wobbler, where the district attorney can use it as a felony, they can charge it as a felony, or a misdemeanor.
They have a choice of one or the other.
But right now, it's strictly a misdemeanor.
This is the law that passed.
Is it California law that passed last year?
Is that that one?
The law was actually passed to change certain things that we would identify juveniles and we would not arrest them and prosecute them as juveniles in the state of California in 2017 approximately, went into effect approximately 2018.
You mentioned these pimps.
How do they manipulate these people?
Well, a lot of the victims, I say girls, but it's also young men, a lot of times they come from broken homes, broken families, broken environment, and if they have nothing going into it, if they have somebody, a father, a mother, a grandparent, an uncle, an aunt, and all they do is consistently break them down.
They tell them that they're worthless.
They're nothing.
They're not going to amount to anything.
You shouldn't have been born.
I hate you.
All these negative things.
After a while, being told that once, it may not affect you.
Being told that every single day of your entire life and not having anybody supportive there for you, it will start to grind on you and grind on you and basically break you down.
Now, if you have somebody come in and they take the role of a parent or a role of somebody that loves them, right?
What they believe is love.
And they build them up and they tell them, I'm going to get you some food.
Which nobody's ever bought them food.
Even at a fast food restaurant.
I'm going to go and here's some brand new clothes.
Or here's a brand new bag.
Or here's some makeup.
I've never had makeup before.
Here's some brand new shoes.
And they tell them, you're beautiful.
You're amazing.
We can do this together.
You and I, we're going to team up.
We're going to conquer the world.
And they build them up.
And then once they're in their life, it totally changes on them.
And now they want to get out, but they don't know how to get out.
Or when they actually do get out, the trafficker or the pimp will pull them back in.
They'll hit a nerve, they'll contact some way, or they'll use their families against them.
Or it can be this basic, so they're rescued out of this situation.
And now, as a non-profit or some other county entity comes in, now I'm going to offer you this.
If that person was making $200 a night, $500 a night, $15 or $2,000 a night, or even over a weekend, And they've never had that kind of money before, but even though they have to take that money and they have to give it over to the trafficker or pimp, and they may get almost nothing out of that, even if the pimp is getting $2,000 a night from them and the pimp gives them $100 or $50 or some new clothes, that's still they made something.
So you've just built up their confidence.
And now you tell them, I'm going to put you in this situation where...
I'm going to offer you a job, and you can have this job, but you're only going to make minimum wage.
And oh yeah, you have to work really hard.
So a lot of times they will go back to a situation, even though it's a horrible situation, because that is what they've known.
That's what they're used to.
So the goal and the hard part about when it comes to enforcement and reinforcement of trying to save some of these victims or help these victims is that They're used to a lifestyle that now that lifestyle is taken away.
All the negative things.
Because I think sometimes, when you're in an abusive relationship, you don't realize it's abusive initially.
It's almost like domestic violence, unfortunately, which is a horrible thing that happens in this country, if not world.
A lot of the victims will end up back with the person who victimized them for an array of different reasons.
Whether somebody feels that's right or wrong, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, but sometimes they go right back to their abuser.
It happens in marriages.
It happens with the relationships.
And it's only after you're out of that situation for a while that you see that that was a very abusive situation.
And the same thing happens with human trafficking.
So it's best to get to them in the grooming phase to not let them go through this process.
And when I was talking about earlier, when I said about get to know your son or your daughter, get to know what they're doing.
Because if you're not in their business, if you're not actually giving them attention, showing them some positive love, showing them the positive affirmations, somebody is.
So I always ask parents, do you want to give it or do you want somebody else to give it?
Because somebody's always lurking, waiting for you not to give love to your child or your loved one.
And when I hear about human trafficking, the media hasn't done much from...
What are your thoughts on that?
I believe it really depends on the point of view of the media.
Can the media make money off it and make profit off this situation?
Is it going to help their ratings or is it going to hurt their ratings?
There's movies that were, some movies that were recently made in the last couple of years.
There's mainstream stars that bring light to certain things.
And this is not to say that this movie is either positive or negative.
I'm just using it as an example.
The movie Hustle.
It was about young ladies in the game, in a strip club, going out, making money off these men, victimizing them and stealing their money.
A form of prostitution.
You have music that is out there.
Music that glamorizes the lifestyle.
There's music.
One of the most familiar rappers, 50 Cent, he made a song called P-I-N-P. And if you actually listen to the lyrics, he lays out everything about pimping.
For the majority of the people, when they listen to that song, it's catchy.
It makes you want to dance.
You bob and you weave to it.
In reality, he's laying out exactly how he victimized.
Now, whether or not he changed his life, I'm not condemning him for.
I'm not talking anything about that.
I'm strictly talking about the song.
There's been many people who have glamorized the lifestyle of prostitution or glamorized human trafficking.
Human trafficking is more than just somebody who is snatched up in a van, taken across the border, whether to Canada or Mexico or overseas.
It happens in our own backyard.
So you think that we have promoted this culture without really probably knowing what it does to these victims?
Yes, without a doubt.
There was a song recently that made national...
I believe it was on the top ten Billboard music.
Music that Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion made.
And I'm not condemning them.
That's their business.
That's their enterprise.
If you want to listen to music, listen to the music.
But if you read the lyrics and if you listen to the lyrics, really listen to the lyrics, listen to what it says.
At times, media promotes something that is really degrading to women, degrading to our young girls.
And then sometimes I don't think we think of a bigger picture of, would we want our daughter to be doing this?
Would we promote this to our daughter?
Or even sometimes our sons, because it can happen to young men also.
So you mentioned when we were offline, you mentioned about your department.
Yes.
You guys have lost a lot of people?
Yes.
Prior to COVID, our task force was a multi-agency task force.
We had representatives from Homeland Security, the Bureau of Prisons.
Probation.
We had several DAs assigned to specifically human trafficking.
Multiple agencies around our county.
Starting when COVID hit, and at the same time COVID hit, there was a horrible incident that dealt with Mr.
George Floyd being killed, which started a national, if not worldly, uprising.
for social justice, right?
And a lot of the idea of defunding came into the picture.
Some departments and cities immediately came out and said, we're going to take money away from certain departments or doing certain things.
Unfortunately for our department and our task force, some of the, because of COVID, because of some funding issues, some of the So our task force went from a task force of 12 down to a task force of two investigators and a supervisor.
It really decimated our task force.
It doesn't mean that the need Or the supply or the demand for human trafficking or sex for profit solicitation went away.
I believe it could only encourage it even more.
Our task forces work very diligently.
They're on call, like most task force dealing with human trafficking, 24 hours a day.
So, and recently they were able to, a few departments have come back to the task force, so right now I believe they're at four, but it still has been very, very hard.
So the idea of defunding police, it hits services like this, right?
Definitely.
In certain law enforcement agencies, it was reported that they came out and said they're going to have to take away from specialized positions, specialized task force.
Unfortunately, some of these task force have to do with human trafficking.
Because human trafficking, there is no money in it for law enforcement.
It's not like drugs, where if we seize a lot of money or drugs, that is seized, and it's seizure asset sure funds.
So when you get the funds, it goes to the police department?
It goes to different departments.
Not necessarily the departments don't receive the money.
The task force will use it for additional resources.
It doesn't go into anybody's pocket, anything like that, but it strictly goes into having more personnel in order to combat some of these issues.
But in human trafficking, a lot of the times that the task force members They're saving victims.
They're pulling resources in.
Our task force has even spent money of their own on hotels, on food, on shoes, on clothing, on bedding, on feminine hygiene supplies, because the money is just not there.
The biggest thing our task force really needs, and I think every task force needs across the country, especially in our county, in San Bernardino County, is more personnel.
There's a lot of talk about defunding and reallocation, right?
But I think sometimes what gets lost in that, regular citizens, regular people, they don't realize where some of the money is going, right?
I'm not saying anything and I'm not here to cast negative that law enforcement gets too money or we don't get money enough.
What I'm saying is the money that is allocated for these task force, these special projects, when that money is taken away, the community hurts because we don't have enough investigators out in the field to combat some of these problems.
And since COVID hit, we've been in COVID for almost over a year now.
A lot of kids have retreated and the schools have kind of essentially shut down.
There's a lot of virtual learning going on.
One of our greatest assets in law enforcement was our teachers.
Because teachers are mandatory reporters, mandated reporters.
They were a great asset because they could report to the Department of Children's Services, which they then would also report to us.
So we would be able to go out and talk to the kids, find out what's going on.
And we would be able to start an investigation on that information.
Now that's not happening so much.
So now our task force has been tasked with doing certain operations to identify some of the issues.
We have taken the position where we want to tackle and take on the demand side.
The demand has always been there, unfortunately, I believe since the beginning of time.
The issue is, if we can tackle the demand side for essentially buying these young girls and sometimes young men and adults sometimes, maybe we can make a dent in this.
But as the numbers show, from 2015 to 2020, the numbers have identified cases of human trafficking have doubled.
I believe last year alone, nationwide, it was up to over 22,000 cases of identified human trafficking.
Of that 22,000, 15,000 were women.
It's something that is an epidemic.
It's something that we need to get a hold on.
And when the task force and operations, they don't have the funding to do this or they don't have the personnel, it only hurts the community.
And this is a problem that affects every community.
Whether you're in the lower economic or you're in higher economic, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter about the race.
It doesn't matter about your zip code.
It affects everyone.
What can the community do to help you guys?
That's an excellent question.
Thank you for that question.
Really educate themselves.
They need education either reaching out to the local law enforcement, Reaching out to their local council members, reaching out to their city council, their board of supervisors.
What is the community doing?
I mean, what is the city officials doing to combat this issue?
And when it comes to the local law enforcement, Looking at what is some of the initiatives that are out there, some of the laws that are passed.
I know for our department, for the San Bernardino County Sheriff Department, our task force actually went around 2017.
They went up to the state capitol, California state capitol, and they partnered with a state legislator to change some of the laws when it comes to victimizing our youth.
So let's say, for instance, there's laws on the books that says that if somebody was to solicit sex from a minor, that minor is identified as 14 and under.
But we still have minors that are 15.
We have minors that are 16 and 17.
The Lowe's Law should be changed.
A minor is a minor.
But honestly, I would say that reach out to your local law enforcement.
Reach out to some of the community organizations and find out what is going on.
There's a lot of nonprofits.
There's a lot of agencies that are doing a lot of hard work to combat this issue.
Just basically get involved.
Start asking questions.
Come to the free training that is offered.
And have a discussion with their youth, their child, their daughters and their sons.
Ask them a basic question.
How are they doing?
What's going on?
Do you have any other thoughts for our audience?
I cannot stress enough.
Talk to, if the parents would talk to their kids more.
More than just good morning, good evening, goodbye.
And I know all parents are busy.
I'm a busy parent too.
Sometimes we're very successful at parenting, and sometimes we flat out fail as parenting.
But unfortunately, we're not in our kids' ear.
We're not in our kids' business.
And our kids are being raised by social media.
Most cell phones, you can look at the person, they have screen time.
I would ask, how much screen time does your child have?
How much are they on the cell phone?
And unfortunately in this past year, it's been very hard, either physically hard on our youth as well as adults, but also our mental health.
And sometimes we haven't really sat out and talked to our kids, get them away from social media, get them away off the internet, and just talk to them one-on-one, have a conversation with them, go for a walk.
Find out who their friends are, because somebody's already reaching out to them.
I cannot stress how important this is, and I thank you very much for your time.
I thank you for the opportunity to bring up the topic of human trafficking and what some of the investigators are doing.
We have a lot of dedicated men and women in law enforcement trying to combat the issue of human trafficking.
And not just in law enforcement, but our non-profits, our community members, our advocates, Recently, the organization Open Door offered virtually training for human trafficking advocates.
They offered it.
It was free of charge.
They had a great response.
The goal is for people to get more involved.
Well, it's great to have you on, Greg.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
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