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Human trafficking task force’s training in Irvine draws law enforcement officers from across state

An Orange County-based human trafficking task force’s intensive training course in Irvine last week drew police officers and other officials from across California intent on learning about the group’s years-long mission: Refocusing law enforcement culture to meet the needs of victims and be sensitive to the emotional trauma they’ve experienced.

The four-day training held by the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force addressed topics such as pimping and pandering investigations, prosecution strategies and victim trauma responses. Underlying those topics was the task force’s open acknowledgement that, historically, law enforcement hasn’t treated women working as prostitutes as victims of sexual exploitation.

Michelle Heater, a program director at Waymakers, a victims’ services non-profit that helped start the task force, said she has seen progress in changing the mindset in approaching victims of such crimes, but that there’s still a lot of work to do years after the group’s formation in 2004.

“I have seen a change,” Heater said as the course kicked off Monday, Nov. 15 with more than 100 sworn law enforcement, prosecutors and government agency or non-profit partners in attendance. “When you look at an investigator or a patrol officer who hasn’t been through the training and the ways they’ll talk to a victim, it’s different.”

Sgt. Juan Reveles, who heads the task force and works for Anaheim Police Department, said he’s not naïve to the fact that some women may chose sex work as a way of making money. The problem arises when all cops believe that applies to all women.

“Ten years has shown us that the vast majority of victims out there are working under some sort of control, and that’d be either a pimp or trafficker,” Reveles said.

Ninety-one percent of the commercially sexually exploited children Orange County Social Services comes into contact with have had prior reports of abuse in the system already, said Nicole Strattman, a supervisor with Orange County Social Services. One 15-year-old child had 13 child abuse reports before their referral for sexual exploitation, she said.

Eighty percent of the more than 300 sex trafficking victims helped by the task force in Orange County last year were not originally from the county, which has become a destination location for traffickers, according to the 2021 Victim Report put out by the task force.

Of the over 300 trafficking victims encountered by the task force, 101 were juveniles.

And yet, many cops are not looking for signs of abuse or exploitation when detaining women or girls working as prostitutes.

Victim advocates at organizations like Waymakers work alongside law enforcement to provide victim services, which can range from bringing food or clothing to helping with job training. Orange and Madera counties are the only places in the state where victim services are their own non-profit entity instead of being a government service.

The hope with the training over the last few days in Irvine, and others like it, is that it will shift the way human trafficking and sexual exploitation is investigated and prosecuted.

Over the years, the training has been held up and down the state with hundreds of officers from different departments attending. Still, there are many departments within Orange County and across the state that haven’t sent their officers to a training or dedicated resources within their departments to this issue. Some departments still haven’t bought into the approach, according to task force leaders.

It’s also hard to persuade cops to stop what they’ve been doing and try a different approach, especially when the victims don’t see themselves as victims or a cop as someone who can help. The foundation of the training is getting law enforcement to realize why they should still help and better understand the effect of trauma when victims are uncooperative.

Putting together a case in which the primary victim is uncooperative is an uphill battle for both investigators and prosecutors, but over last 10 years, 94% of cases reviewed by the Human Trafficking Prosecution Unit were filed, and of those cases, 95% received a guilty verdict, according to the task force report.

“Orange County is a national leader in combating human trafficking through a victim-centered approach and serves as an example for other law enforcement agencies in California,” said Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer in a statement. “By arming our law enforcement partners with the information they need to fight human trafficking, we are helping to rescue these vulnerable victims from the hell they are being forced to endure and putting their predators behind bars where they can no longer hurt children.”

Senate Bill 357, passed in September, repealed the law that makes it illegal to loiter with the intent of engaging in sex work. Sen. Scott Weiner, who co-authored the bill, has publicly said the repeal is part of the effort to end violence and discrimination against sex workers, especially Black, Latino and transgender women.

There’s also a push to decriminalize prostitution completely.

Sgt. Reveles said his Task Force doesn’t arrest for prostitution, but decriminalization would prevent his investigators from detaining women who may need help, further incentives pimps when grooming victims, and undercut the efforts of the task force.

“It’s a woman’s body and what they’re going to do is what they’re going to do, but for that small percentage, you’re dooming the vast majority,” said Reveles.


Source: Orange County Register

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