Law enforcement teams up to take on human trafficking

On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice hosted a webinar in San Francisco to announce the establishment of a working group to tackle the problem. Nearly 200 people from law enforcement and the public and private sector were on the call to discuss their efforts to collaborate on preventive approaches to human trafficking.

According to the Alliance to End Human Trafficking, large sporting events like the Super Bowl can be accompanied by an increased demand for commercial sex services.

Ahead of the 2017 Super Bowl, a nationwide sting operation across 15 states led to 750 arrests related to sex trafficking, according to the Cooks County Sheriff’s Office in Illinois. More than 100 of those arrests were made in Houston, the host city.

In the month leading up to the 2023 Super Bowl, online sex advertisements rose by 43% in Phoenix the host location, compared to the same period in 2022. According to the Arizona Attorney General, 75% of victims said they had been advertised or sold online.

With the large influx of people coming into the Bay Area for various events, private and public entities — from hotel corporations to district attorneys’ offices — are preparing for a possible rise in human trafficking crimes.

“When we’re going to have these large-scale public events that we know may attract traffickers, we want to make sure that we have the best protocol and strategy in place,” San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said during Tuesday’s webinar.

In 2023, 12% of the nation’s human trafficking cases came out of California. The majority of those cases were sex trafficking, with 83% of victims identifying as female, according to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, a nonprofit that connects victims and survivors of sex and labor trafficking with services and supports.

The Northern California High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area is a government program that helps facilitate coordination between federal, state, local agencies and private industries to tackle organized crime, specifically drug trafficking. The NCHIDTA also helps provide federal resources for local agencies to address these crimes. The Northern California Regional Intelligence Center serves as a central hub for information sharing between law enforcement agencies at the state, local and federal levels.

The NCHIDTA and NCRIC helped connect the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Northern District of California, police departments and offices of the district attorney in every Bay Area county, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security with regional hotel branches like Marriott and local restaurant associations.

“We cannot do this alone,” Ismail Ramsey, the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, said. “Our working group is here to send a clear message: there is zero tolerance in the Bay Area for human trafficking.”

Effective communication between these entities is essential during major sporting events to efficiently combat human trafficking, the webinar participants said.

“It’s about coming together, building these connections and relationships so that we have the most effective strategies put in place to both protect survivors, prevent people from being victimized, and be able to effectively catch and prosecute those who are committing these crimes,” Jenkins said.

Because sex traffickers can be nomadic, it is important for perpetrators to be tracked down quickly before leaving the region.

“We’ve got sex trafficking organizations across the U.S. that can come to our region for major events,” Sena said. “They’re transitory in many ways which makes it difficult if they are here for a short window of time.”

Additionally, the San Francisco Police Department needs more resources to sufficiently investigate sex trafficking since it is facing a significant staffing shortage.

“While we do have dedicated investigators at SFPD who do focus on human trafficking, it is a part of the division that we need to bolster and will only be able to do so once their staffing numbers increase,” Jenkins said. “That is why we have to lean on and partner with other agencies, both federal and state as well as other localities in the Bay Area to make sure that we’re working together on these issues.”

While the NBA All-Star Game is taking place at the Chase Center in San Francisco in February, even bigger events like Super Bowl LX and several FIFA World Cup matches will occur in 2026 at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

Santa Clara County already has the Law Enforcement Investigating Human Trafficking Task Force in place to investigate both labor and sex trafficking. It will be heavily involved in the partnership, said Executive Director of NCHIDTA and NCRIC Mike Sena.

“It’s an opportunity for us to shine in the same way that the Warriors, Giants and Niners have in the past,” Ramsey said. “But most importantly, it’s to protect victims and make sure that we can try to free people who are caught up in this situation.”