Mayor Woodford issued a proclamation declaring January 11, 2021 to be Human Trafficking Awareness Day. He asked Police Chief Todd Thomas to give a presentation to the Common Council on on how the Appleton Police Department responds to human trafficking.
Chief Thomas also included a Human Trafficking 101 fact sheet for the alderpersons.
When addressing human trafficking in Appleton, the Appleton Police Department focuses on three different areas.
- Suppression
- Services
- Prevention and Education
Suppression – generally their special operations unit runs several operations/stings a year. They’ll look at backpage.com and other resources to try to identify victims who are being human trafficked. Those stings typically result in about 5-10 arrests of individuals who are pandering to prostitution.
Services – The Victim Crisis Response Team is a part of any human trafficking operation APD conducts and trafficking victims are turned over to a civilian victim crisis response worker.
The crisis response worker has a checklist of questions they go through aimed at finding out some of the history behind why this person might be involved in prostitution, where they were victimized, contacts they might have, and possible support systems. They are treated as victims.
The offenders that are arrested for pandering prostitution are given the option to go to a John School. The John School was created many years ago, and our district attorney’s office is very involved in it. It educates men who use prostitutes on the issue of prostitution and talks to them about why victims become victimized. It also identifies any underlying issues they might have with substance abuse, mental health issues, or other problems and tries to serve them in that way.
Education and Prevention – They make social media postings and give public presentations about human trafficking. In particular, they give presentations to students at area schools. They talk to middle and high schoolers about being cyberstalked and educate them on areas where they could be victimized and lured in.
They also work with hotels, restaurants, and the transit center with the aim of educating people to recognize things that are out of place so they can then call the police. It comes down to the old “See Something Say Something”.
Per Chief Thomas, human trafficking is very active in the Fox Valley. If they did a sting every month, they would be busy. Not only do they work with local community partners on education, they’re also active at the state level and have several officers who are on the state task force working to put together best practices state-wide that other agencies are now following.
Mayor Woodford finished out the presentation by stating that this is an important issue for our area, whether people are aware of it or not, and that we can all play a role as members of the community in fighting it.
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