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 |  Subject: Human Trafficking Outpaces Drugs, Guns As World’s Fastest Growing Criminal Industry  Sat Jul 13, 2019 2:14 pm | |
| https://www.sgtreport.com/2019/07/human-trafficking-outpaces-drugs-guns-as-worlds-fastest-growing-criminal-industry/
Human Trafficking Outpaces Drugs, Guns As World’s Fastest Growing Criminal IndustryJuly 13, 2019
from Humans Are Free:
Massachusetts and Rhode Island are two of several states that have established task forces to confront what has become the fastest growing criminal industry in the world — human trafficking.
The smuggling of human beings for the purposes of forced labor and sexual exploitation outranks drug smuggling, and is tied with illegal arms sales, according to a United Nations study.
Task forces consisting of federal immigration officials, prosecutors, local police, the FBI and non-governmental organizations are pooling resources, knowledge and experience to deal with trafficking in southern New England. They are looking both worldwide and close to home for lessons that might help in better understanding the dimensions of the problem.
Dutch Police and agents of Interpol have determined that thousands of women and teenage girls have been brought to this city against their wills to serve as prostitutes.
One study‚ conducted by a former sex-worker turned Amsterdam city council member‚ found that three quarters of the city’s 8,000 to 11,000 prostitutes were likely victims of criminal gangs. Norma Ramos of the Coalition against Trafficking in Women is not surprised by this particular statistic.
She says, “When you have countries like the Netherlands that have legalized prostitution, what you have done is given the traffickers a great gift. What you have in those countries is a core center of legalized prostitution and then an enormous ring of illegal prostitution and trafficking that takes place both inside the legal trafficking and outside of it.”
Ramos cited the example of Amsterdam when her organization joined with other human trafficking advocates last year in a campaign to end prostitution in Rhode Island.
She says, “With The Coalition, along with Equality Now, we wrote letters to the legislature in Rhode Island to close what essentially amounted to a thirty year loophole in their state laws that allowed indoor prostitution.”
This change has had a major impact says Rhode Island State Police Superintendent Brendan Doherty, “Since the bill has passed statewide, The state police, along with Providence police, Pawtucket police and I believe Warwick police have arrested probably six or eight johns. There have been seven or eight arrests as result of infiltrating massage parlors and nail salons.”
Despite this success, not everyone agreed that ending indoor prostitution would stop the practice of forcing or coercing women to prostitute against their wills.
Some sex workers, bloggers and self-professed libertarians argued at state hearings last year that criminalizing the practice would only drive traffickers further underground. Police do not deny that this may have happened.
One detective concedes that trying to spot possible human trafficking venues now might not be as easy as it was in the past, even with a trained eye.
Lt. Mike Correia, who heads up narcotics and organized crime investigations for the Providence Police, describes the difficulties in finding these venues, “This building right here. You can see that it’s sandwiched between a new hair salon, some thriving businesses, a restaurant, actually some residential up above. No signage to lead you to believe that it was a spa.”
Lt. Correia says that as a result of this shift, the police have come to rely more and more on the community for tips.
About one such location, Correia says, “It was on the first floor, it’s vacant now. Nothing overt to lead you to believe it was a massage parlor but there were neighborhood complaints. I have to admit the first time I did a little surveillance myself I’m like, ’I don’t think they’ve got this right.’ But we dug a little deeper, with a little more persistence, and sure enough, they were running a spa in the place.”
Correia says since end of the indoor prostitution loophole, Rhode Island police have also developed better working relationships with local advocacy groups that work with prostituted women and children. Correia says the collaboration has changed his perspective.
“Quite frankly, I think sometimes the police- you know our strength isn’t always with the victim, emphasizing with the victim” says Correia, “So it is a good collaboration. So recognizing that if we go in and arrest a girl who is potentially a victim, but yet breaking the law, if we put her in handcuffs, what’s the odds of her believing that we’re really trying to help her?”
So how does the collaboration work in practice? Correia explains, “We’ll send an undercover [officer] into a massage parlor, he’ll get solicited, back out, and he’ll leave. We’ll put that fact pattern together and get a search warrant, and we’re looking for documents, bank accounts, checking accounts, phone bills, who’s paying the rent, who’s paying the advertising bills. It’s a puzzle.
“But what we will do when we bring those document warrants, is we’ll bring advocates with us. It’s a non-enforcement type of setting. No one’s in handcuffs. We’re trying to build a relationship with the victim to see if one will help us put the whole puzzle together.”
Similar outreach efforts are taking place on the federal level. But it is not easy, according to Assistant US Attorney Ted Merritt, “Certainly one of the biggest hurdles in doing a human trafficking prosecution that focuses on sexual exploitation is finding the victims who are willing to testify and be part of the process that is going to eventually and hopefully lead to the prosecution of the people that are exploiting them.”
On every level, distrust of law enforcement runs deep through minority and immigrant communities, especially among people from countries where police are often the perpetrators of some of the worst offenses.
Victims, who often are undocumented, also fear that coming forward will result in automatic deportation. Immigration and Custom Enforcement agent for the Northeast, Bruce Folcart, says his agency is trying to change that perception.
Read More @ HumansAreFree.com |
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