GregBristol

When you are driving by a truck rest stop at 2AM and you think you see girls in the parking lot getting into trucks, call the NHTRC hot-line and report a possible incident of sex trafficking.

If you are driving by a young girl that appears to be a "prostitute" getting yelled at by a male, call the NHTRC hot-line and report a possible incident of sex trafficking.

If your friend tells you about her neighbor who has a domestic servant who has rarely been seen outside that house in ten years, ask a few more questions, collect the facts, and call the NHTRC and submit a domestic servitude tip.

If you are working late one night and you are across the street from a "massage parlor" that is open until 2AM and you see an out of state van pull up and six women quickly exit it into the massage parlor and ten women are loaded into it, call the NHTRC and submit a tip.

If you see young boys selling candy bars and when you don't buy something from him and the young boy walks away only to get yelled at by a man for not making sales, discreetly collect more information and call the NHTRC and submit a labor abuse tip.

When in doubt, call the NHTRC.

When I left the Michigan State Police in 1987 to become a FBI Agent I was assigned to the FBI Washington Field Office and assigned to a foreign counterintelligence squad. The 1980s was the "Decade of Spies" in the US. 1984 alone had 12 resorted espionage cases. US counterintelligence arrested or neutralized more than 50 Americans who attempted to or actually committed espionage. I work the Oklahoma City bombing, both attacks on the World Trade Center, and the DC Sniper Case. In January 2002, I was assigned to the Enron Task Force and investigate all the fraud involving Enron Corp, a 4.5 year assignment. They day I got back after Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted, I was assigned to a Civil Rights Squad, and worked hate crimes and human trafficking. One of my 2009 human trafficking victim rescues is featured in the documentary Not My Life, which I think is the best documentary out there on this topic. Working human trafficking cases has been the highlight of my law enforcement career.

The first thing I would do is get familiar with what human trafficking is. The US Department of State (USDS) annual Trafficking in Person's (TIP) report gives a great overview of the world problem. The FBI's Civil Rights Unit and Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Right Division web sites also have background on this crime, what cases the federal government has, and stats on the number of people charged and convicted. After that I would going a grassroots anti-trafficking community group and invited your local police or federal law enforcement to come in and speak to you.

Being in the DC area we did not get the really "bad" cases, like you would see in the SW states. The 2006 NY case (Tae Hoon Kim) was pretty bad. He was the Flushing-based middleman and transporter in the ring. A court ordered wiretap let to the discovery on an extensive network of Korean-owned brothels, stretching from RI to DC. When I took part of interviewing many of the victims and saw how those women were mistreated, it really showed how bad this crime was and that motivated me to work those cases until I retired. It is hard to work an espionage case, a 17 year bombing case like the UNABOMBER, or a $7 billion bank fraud embezzlement case, but human trafficking cases are not hard. However, it take law enforcement resources to address it and it seems there are few officers, deputies, troopers or special agents trained to investigate this crime, let alone ASSIGNED to investigate these crimes. I hear time and again concerned citizens calling in tips about street prostitution and the police doing little about it. Street prostitution IS HUMAN TRAFFICKING plain and simple. The pimps are part of the organized crime network that is running these operations, and they are becoming millionaires through their efforts, leaving a trail of hurt victims.

We don't have good stats on what the level of human trafficking is in the US. I often hear that human trafficking is the second largest and fastest growing crime in the world (2008 UN Office on Drugs and Crime report). That means it is between drug trafficking and weapons trafficking.

The International Labor Organization (ILO) stated in 2012 that modern -day slavery worldwide claims 20.9 million victims; however, only 40,000 victims worldwide were identified in 2012.

Here in the US, the magnitude of the problem is not known. DOJ estimates that been 14,500 and 17,500 are trafficked into the US each year. Yet DOJ's Civil Rights Division only prosecuted 128 cases in FY 2012, charging 200 defendants (source: USDS TIP report).

If you would like to learn more about the stats, check out the DOJ Office of Justice Programs Special Report Characteristics of Suspected Human Trafficking Incidents, 2008-2010. It reviews in detail federal prosecutions of traffickers.

Some good news is just around the corner: Beginning in January 2013, the FBI's Uniform Crime Report (UCR) will begin collecting offense and arrest data regarding human trafficking as authorized by the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. The act requires the FBI to collect human trafficking offense data and to make distinctions between assisting or promoting prostitution, purchasing prostitution, and prostitution.