Human Trafficking Training Center

I get messages weekly with questions about how to select the proper human trafficking training. I thought I would give my thoughts on what to look for in selecting the proper training for you. My first question would be what is the target audience? Is the audience the public, or is it front line workers like police officers, probation officers, prosecutors, or advocates? For the public, an awareness-based training that highlights basic indicators of trafficking and who to call if they suspect trafficking is sufficient. This training is offered everywhere, and the information is boiler plate and basic. For key first responders, awareness-based training is not sufficient. They need skills-based training. These training courses may provide some crossover with the basic information of awareness-based training (like indicators) but they go much further to provide the skills that the officers will need. Skills-based training will cover things like how to gather evidence, interviewing a potential trafficking victim, searching phones, PTSD, trauma bonding, tattoos, forced criminality and many other things they will need to do to actually help the victim *and* build a criminal case against the trafficker. These types of training are rare and few know how to provide them. So how do you determine who can provide a good skills-based training? First, call around. Find other places that have had this training and ask them what they thought of the training. Ask the provider for a list of former clients, they should be able happy to provide that. Second, consider if they are busy? A good provider should be booked 6 months plus out, if they are not, my question would be why? Third, what is the experience level of the instructors? When I was a detective, we used to say that a new detective needs at least two years in that job to be worth a darn. How many cases did they work? You have no business teaching other officers about trafficking if you have only investigated a handful of cases. Are the instructors a good mix of law enforcement, survivors, financial, and other fields relevant to trafficking? Fourth, how much do they charge? This is often something most don’t think about, but if the training is good and sought after it will generally cost more money. Training courses that are free or cost very little most often mean they are providing generic, awareness-based information, or they aren’t very good. With many things in life, you get what you pay for. Lastly, do they refer to themselves as a trafficking subject matter expert? I am going to make an entire post about this, but my argument is there is no such thing and if they don’t understand that then I would look somewhere else for my training. Overall, awareness-based trafficking training is good for the public but not the police or front-line workers. These folks need strong skills-based training to make any difference to helping victims of human trafficking. Make sure you vet who you hire.

One of the questions that I get asked all the time is about the HTTC board of directors. I tell them that we do not have a board because we are not a non-profit. People are always surprised. When Alison Phillips and I started the Human Trafficking Training Center in 2021 we did not want the HTTC to be a non-profit for a variety of reasons. The first reason is we had both just left the government and our feelings were that the government is just not accountable and therefore never changes and in general is not successful. Our feelings were that if we were a for profit business that we would have to provide a great product, or no one would buy it and we should go bankrupt. This forces you to continue to improve yourself and your product to grow. If we do not do these things capitalism will take its toll and we will be out of business. When the government is not successful it does not matter, the tax dollars just keep rolling in and there is no incentive to change or grow and there is almost never accountability. Having been in this field for years I have also seen this with non-profits. Some are great and are good stewards of the donors’ dollars and are saving lives. Many are not, they waste much of the donors’ dollars, the money goes missing or is spent on things that would make your head spin. For example, in 2023 I know four CEOs of non-profits that were let go for a variety of reasons. Missing money, spending money on first class airfare and 5-star restaurants, buying themselves a BMW with donor money, buying their girlfriend “New Breasts” with donor money, using donor money to fund their autobiography, hiring their family members and in-laws and the list goes on and on. There were also the non-profits that lost funding due to the fact they were making up their stats on what they were doing, or just flat out lying to their donors about what they were doing. When you are spending and using other people’s money, it is easy to get caught up in bad decisions and forget why we are here in the first place. It becomes a job, a career choice and no longer a calling. Have I mentioned all the competition over funders which unfortunately leads to backbiting, fighting, attempts to hurt the “competition” so that others can get more funding. How about the fighting over grants. The current system is just not conducive to success. We are fighting among ourselves as much as we are fighting the traffickers. Human Trafficking is turning into an “Industry” where we don’t really want to fix the problem, because then we would be out of a job. Human Trafficking is going to become like the poverty industry if we are not careful, no incentive to fix the problem.  Complaints about non-profits and who people should give their money to is the second most asked question I get. I have been burned several times by non-profits I trusted only to find out they were using money on crazy stuff or just did not know where their money was even going. This all makes me sad.   

Turkey season opened this week in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri so been up at 346 and Turkey hunting from sun up till about noon and spending the rest of my time returning calls, emails, setting up trainings, and all the other stuff behind the scenes. Yesterday I received a call from an officer in the northeast who has been trying so hard to work a case on an illicit massage business. Six months in and he is still not been successful but his approaches have all been outdated and followed the previous years models that have never been successful. We have a long conversation about the business model, the Four Corner Strategy and how to dismantle these operations. He was very appreciative and said that he had never been taught any of this stuff in over 20 years of being in law enforcement. A couple hours later I received a call from a Homeland Security Agent who had talked with the officer and wanted to put me on speaker phone so some other agents could hear and go over this same information. I did for the next hour and again they were super appreciative and stated they understood they have been going about these cases incorrectly and are going to change their way of investigationg. How do we expect law enforcement to be successful when we don’t give them the tools to be successful? Answer: They won’t be!!! #training #police #humantrafficking #lawenforcement #policetraining

We are at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri today teaching human trafficking investigations to officers, deputies, probation, social services and child advocacy. This class teaches the officers how to properly investigate these types of cases using the Special Victims Methodology, how to and where to locate evidence, including financial evidence and how to get the case through prosecution. #humantrafficking #police #policetraining #training #lawenforcement

Meghan Connors and I are in St Louis today teaching human trafficking interdiction to police officers, deputies, probation, CPS and advocates. I know I keep saying it but if we want to move the needle we have to provide skills based training to the police. Thanks to St Charles County Police for hosting us and to Amy Robins for setting this training up and recognizing how important this is. #policetraining #lawenforcement #training #lawenforcementtraining #humantrafficking

Predators vs Traffickers, there seems to be so much confusion about these two very different criminals. Everyday I see social media posts, news stories, press conferences and elected officials misspeak, put out information that is not true or accurate and discuss things that confuse and mislead the general public. Do I think this is happening on purpose, I do not, I am 100% convinced that they do not understand the differences and just think they are the same. I even listened to a presenter one time at a Gala event use the terms predators and trafficker interchangeably during their presentation and afterward I asked her if there was a difference. She told me there was not a difference, that predators have just one victim and traffickers have more than one. Clearly, she needed a lot of training. So, what are the differences between traffickers and predators. Well, they are completely different criminals with completely different motivations and completely different mindsets. The trafficker is motivated by money, that’s it. Their goal is to use forced criminality to make money by grooming, manipulating, exploiting and forcing others to commit crimes. They are not motivated by sex, they may use sexual assault to trauma bond, exploit and force their victims, but they are not motivated by it. For them it is just a business, and the victims are just property to utilize to make money. Many times, the traffickers are also involved in other forms of criminal activity and most of the time are not strangers to the criminal justice system. Predators on the other hand are motivated by sexual gratification. They also use grooming, manipulation, exploitative behavior and sometimes force to achieve their goal which is to fulfill their fantasy, desire, and paraphilia. They are typically not motivated by money, and they may or may not be known to the police and may or may not commit other crimes. It is not unusual for a predator to blend into the community so much so that their friends and neighbors are shocked if their behavior is exposed. Can there be crossover, sure, do predators sometimes offer things of value for sex with a juvenile, which in most states is considered trafficking yes, but most of the times traffickers and predators are very different and are not motivated by the same things. This is why many law enforcement agencies even have different units that investigate these types of offenders and their crimes because they are so different.   

Whether in our law enforcement training, talking to elected officials, the public, non-profits, or people that email or message us two things that people are always confused about is trafficking vs smuggling and predator’s vs traffickers. Most people do not know the differences, use these terms interchangeably and are confused as many think they are all the same.  So, what are the differences and why do we all need to understand this. The why is easy, if you do not understand the differences how can we expect to intelligently discuss these issues and secondly how are we ever going to develop ways to stop them if we don’t understand them. Here are some of the differences:   Trafficking                                                               Smuggling Crime Against a person                     Crime against a nation’s sovereignty Can be domestic or international      Has to be international Consent is not possible                     Consent is possible Trafficked persons are victims           Illegal entry is a crime   Most people that are being smuggled across our southern border are not being trafficked. Are many of them vulnerable and at risk for trafficking, for sure, can smuggling lead to trafficking, for sure, could they be trafficked in the future, for sure. Is the open border going to lead to more trafficking overall, yes, how could it not with so many vulnerable people coming across, that is just common sense. Trafficking is all about exploiting vulnerabilities. Last week I heard an elected official say that the people being smuggled across the southern border are being brought here and then “Put into the trafficking system”. That is completely not true. This does not mean that the southern border is not a total trainwreck and that some of the people coming across the border will be trafficked because they will be, or that some may be trafficked in the future because some will be, but to say that all of them are being put into the trafficking system is just not true. Smuggling and trafficking are completely different crimes that may have some crossover but are not the same. It’s like saying apples and oranges are both fruits so they are the same. They may both be fruit but taste different, look different and are different.  

Many people can't seem to wrap their heads around the fact that the police are not trained in human trafficking and especially not skills-based training. They also don't understand how quickly things will change once proper training is provided. For example, we have conducted 4 trainings in the last 4 weeks, with a total of 408 attendees. In these last four weeks officers have identified 19 trafficking victims and arrested several traffickers, with numerous investigations on going. These identifications have come from many sources, to include in the hospital setting, probation and parole home visits, vehicle stops, domestic disturbance call, hotel call, consensual contact and even a jail transport from another state back to Missouri. Literally a person who has been arrested in another state on a warrant, waived extradition and was being transported back to her home state, was identified in the vehicle on the way back. The officers recognized the indictors, knew how to communicate with her and even recognized that her warrant was due to forced criminality. Upon return as the officers used the Special Victims Methodology and not a police interview, the victim disclosed, her criminal charges are being dealt with and she is going into a trafficking program. This is what we should be doing every day in America. It is not hard, TRAIN THE POLICE!!!! #policetraining #police #humantrafficking #lawenforcementtraining #lawenforcement

Heidi Olson called me the other day while she was sitting at the DMV and in a frustrated voice began telling me about the slides that were being shown to customers as they wait their turn. Heidi was amazed at the missed opportunity to educate the public correctly and asked me do you know where they are getting their information. I told Heidi I had a good guess but since I was not sure I did not want to speculate. We can all agree it was from the wrong source. On one hand, I do not totally blame the Missouri Department Of Revenue who oversees the licensing offices in the state. In their defense, what do they know about trafficking, not a thing. They simply called someone, probably someone else working in government who they thought knew something about trafficking due to a job title. Unfortunately, just because you have a job title does not mean you know anything, especially when talking about the government. In this case it has made them look bad in the eyes of anyone that is involved in stopping trafficking, they have missed an amazing opportunity to help and unfortunately made it more difficult for the rest of us trying to stop trafficking as now how many people have been misinformed and educated on things that are not true or accurate. Am I surprised? No. Will anything change? Probably not. Generally, in these circumstances the government just doubles down and continues, in this case they are hurting victims, the public, the movement and making themselves look bad. #humantrafficking #training #whatnottodo #humantraffickingawareness

Yesterday we received information from an officer who wanted to share what his unit had been doing. The officer stated that over the years they had attempted to deal with Illicit Massage Businesses in their city but none of the strategies they used had proven successful. After attending our training, they decided to try the Four Corner Strategy, specifically the criminal investigation side of this strategy. They used these strategies, followed the evidence and within 45 days executed a search warrant on a business. They did not arrest any victims, but instead offered services and used the Special Victims Methodology. They did arrest one of the organizations key players for human trafficking and using their new skills, executed a follow up warrant and subsequently seized $120,000 in United States currency. The business is now closed, the person responsible is in jail and the victims are getting services.  This is how these investigations are supposed to work, but historically this is not what has happened. Victims are routinely arrested, businesses close and then reopen again within a few days and the key players are seldom arrested. This strategy has proven so successful, we get requests for the Illicit Massage Business Investigations class and how the Four Corner Strategy works weekly. If you are interested in this training, we will be teaching this strategy across America in 2024, in Portland, Boise, San Franciso, Riverside, Houston, Austin, Chicago area and working on classes in Florida and Georgia as we speak. There is no reason why we cannot dismantle these organizations, arrest those responsible and help victims in a timely fashion.