District attorneys and law enforcement authorities from across the state convened a summit in downtown Los Angeles Friday aimed at coordinating efforts to combat human trafficking — one of a half-dozen planned gatherings expected to occur over a six-month period.
“With this summit and the work of our local prosecutors’ offices, we want to send a clear message to human traffickers and buyers of child sex that we know they exist and we are after them,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said. “I hope we also send a clear message to the victims of human trafficking, who are still in bondage, that we care about them and are looking for ways to help free them”
The summit, organized by the newly formed Human Exploitation and Trafficking Institute think tank, will also hold meetings in Orange County, Fresno, Sacramento and the Bay Area. According to organizers, the summits are aimed at gathering information on ways diverse communities across the state are responding to human trafficking.
Participants heard from law-enforcement professionals, service providers and survivors of sex trafficking.
“Phase I of the H.E.A.T. Institute is bring together county leaders, child welfare, education, law enforcement, criminal justice, health, the nonprofit sector and survivor voices to be part of a Blue Ribbon Commission,” Alameda County District Attorney Nancy E. O’Malley said. “We will focus on regional responses to and understanding of the commercial sexual exploitation of children and other victims of human trafficking.
“We will assess our strengths, gaps and needs in order to develop a visionary strategy to put an end to this criminal enterprise of pandemic proportion,” she said.
The meeting came one day after Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell announced the formation of a human trafficking task force aimed at providing relief to the hundreds of men and women ensnared here by sex traffickers each year.
The unit will include personnel from the Sheriff’s Department, the FBI, the District Attorney’s Office and other agencies and focus on bringing stiffer prosecutions against traffickers and johns who interact with minors, McDonnell said.
California is a hot spot for human trafficking. The National Human Trafficking Resource Center’s hotline has received more than 2,000 reports of human trafficking cases in California since 2012, the most of any state in the United States, the Los Angeles Times reported. The hotline has received 477 reports of trafficking cases in California so far in 2015, more than twice the number reported in Texas, the state from which the hotline received its second highest number of calls.
The new unit will be based in Monterey Park, McDonnell said, adding that he hopes the task force will allow law enforcement to provide better access to relief resources for trafficking victims. Roughly 85 people from various law enforcement and social service agencies will be assigned to the task force, officials said.
—City News Service