Human Trafficking: Identifying Victims

Human trafficking is not the first thing you might think about as a policing issue, but it occurs everywhere.  In this episode Dr’s Gibbs and Strohacker from Penn State Harrisburg discuss their research that indicates training is imperative for street-level officers to recognize human trafficking.  

Main Topics

•While human trafficking is portrayed in a sensational manner in entertainment media, officers are really navigating more nuanced situations, ambiguous situations.
•A survey of police officers from a large agency in Pennsylvania found that training, rather than experience handing or investigating human trafficking, was better for identifying victims.
•They suggest that standardized training is needed for officers to identify human trafficking victims

Don't forget to like, FOLLOW, and share. Sharing this podcast or an episode is one of the best complements I can receive, which will help grow the show.

And don't forget to provide a review. Giving five stars is never a bad idea.

Feel free to email me your comments using the "send us a text" option (above), or at the following email address: policeinservicetrainingpodcast@gmail.com

You can also contact me at: Bluesky: @policeinservice.bsky.social

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the author and guests, and are not authorized by and do not necessarily reflect those of the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services or the State of New York.

Transcript

Welcome to the Police in Service Training Podcast.
This podcast is dedicated to providing research evidence to street-level police officers and
command staff alike.
The program is intended to help the police and law enforcement community create better
programs, understand challenging policies, and dispel the myths of police officer behavior.
I'm your host, Scott Phillips.
Human trafficking is not the first thing that comes to mind when we think about police-focused
research.
We might consider human trafficking something that is in the purview of the federal government.
But this problem occurs, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, in every state
in the union.
And like most illegal activity, sooner or later it's bound to be uncovered by a street-level
patrol officer.
And this assumes that they know what they are looking for.
Like anything else a police officer does frequently, such as traffic stops, they can practice good
policing with each new engagement.
However, because human trafficking may not be something a police officer commonly deals
with, street-level officers may not recognize it or know what to do when they uncover it.
To help us better understand the nature of human trafficking and the role of a street-level
When dealing with these events, we are joined on the podcast by Dr. Jennifer Gibbs and Dr.
Emily Strohawker.
Jennifer Gibbs joined the faculty at Penn State University in Harrisburg in 2013 after
completing her Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice from the University of Maryland.
She has an impressive publication record, and her current research interests include
recruitment and retention in policing, violence against the police, terrorism, and public
attitudes towards the police.
Dr. Strohawker is an associate professor of criminal justice in the School of Public Affairs
at Penn State Harrisburg.
She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida's Department of Sociology.
Her areas of research include criminology, deviance, and specifically areas of cyber
bullying, cyber crimes, and human trafficking, where according to Google Scholar, she is
the go-to person to discuss this topic.
Welcome to the podcast.
Thank you.
Thank you for having us today.
Well, I'm glad you could join us.
Now, there's a lot of policing research out there.
When I review Google Scholar or ResearchGate for a new scholarship, some of it's what you
kind of expect, such as use of force, evidence of body camera usage, and its effectiveness,
those kinds of things.
When I found your research into human trafficking, it kind of jumped out as being, well, different.
What got you guys interested in this topic?
So I want to say that I jumped at the chance to work with Dr. Strohacker.
She's our resident victimologist, and I was eager to see how we could pair our research
interests.
And as a little bit of background, my first job out of college, I worked at the Niagara
Falls Police Department in Niagara Falls, New York.
And my partner was a police officer, and we would have many wonderful conversations.
I was a civilian, by the way.
And we worked in domestic violence investigation.
So there's some relation there.
But yeah, I was very excited to be able to work with Dr. Strohacker.
Yeah.
Thanks.
Thanks, Jen.
So I think for this project specifically, too, what kind of drew us together, combining
our topics of interest.
So me being in the field of victimology and Dr. Gibbs being in policing, was really kind
of to look at how human trafficking is discussed publicly, and how it's understood and then
handled on the ground by practitioners such as law enforcement officers.
I think for this project specifically, and probably safe to say around the topic of human
trafficking in general, it's very much framed in more extreme or sensational ways.
But officers themselves are really navigating more nuanced situations, ambiguous situations.
And so kind of us tying our fields of interest and research agendas together to understand
the distinction between victimization, agency, coercion, all of these kind of aspects of
this crime in real time, really kind of got us to the project at hand.
OK.
So that does naturally lead me into my second question I had, and it might seem obvious,
but can either of you offer an overview of a little bit more depth on why the area is
of value or relevance to the police?
After all, as I mentioned in the intro, this is not something an average street cop would
handle.
And you mentioned a moment ago the idea of sensationalism.
I'm aware of human trafficking from the movie Taken.
I've never seen it.
I'm aware of its existence.
But after reading your article, there's much more depth to it than that.
Yes, so I will say a lot of my students also are very familiar with the movie Taken.
I think that type of sensationalism from mainstream media really is what shapes a lot of public
perceptions.
And so in the area of policing, if we don't have trainings, if we don't have scenario-based
situations and things of that nature, that can also shape their perceptions.
And so if the officers are not correctly identifying what they're seeing, then we find victims
being misclassified, offenders going uncharged, cases missed entirely.
And so I think that's really what makes this type of crime different from a lot of others.
It's not just about officers enforcing code or policy, right?
It's about their discernment and their understanding of what is this and how does this look and
knowing that trafficking is so fluid in a way, it can really be difficult to discern
is this prostitution, which is very much something entirely different, or is this trafficking.
And so officers can run into that if they're not being exposed to the proper training or
having experience making themselves more knowledgeable about what this truly entails.
Right.
This is something that it's not like riding a bike that you do all the time or traffic
stops that they do all the time.
So in your article, one of the topics you focused on is standardized training for police
to recognize human trafficking.
And that had gotten me thinking about my DWI training from many years ago when I was in
the academy.
The training offered a handful of tools to identify a potential drunk driver such that
they might be swerving as they were driving down the road or riding one of the dividing
lines.
Then we were provided with a few standardized field sobriety tests such as walking heel
to toe or one legged stand.
How can standardized training that can, of course, help with recognition of human trafficking?
I think it's a really helpful comparison and to even extend it beyond the DWI to tools
that officers already use in other areas.
So what comes to mind for me is the lethality assessment protocols in domestic violence
calls.
And those protocols exist because we know that the danger is not always obvious on the
surface level.
And those protocols or assessments, they're not designed to replace officer's discretion,
but they give the officers more structured, evidence-based indicators and questions to
ask to guide their discussion with what they're responding to.
And knowing that these can be very complex, high-risk situations that they're in.
And so I think standardizing human trafficking training can function in kind of a similar
way.
So we're not really relying on their instinct.
We're not really relying on their individual experience.
We are focusing more on officers being taught consistent indicators to recognize potential
trafficking.
So signs of coercion or control, someone else answering for the individual that they might
be responding to, the individual having restricted movements, not having access to their own
personal documentation, all of these types of things.
Providing the training around these issues can also help officers in a more trauma-informed
way to respond to these types of calls.
Because we do know victims might not be willing to disclose immediately, they'll come right
out and say, I'm a victim of human trafficking, because they don't always understand that
themselves.
And so having officers go through something or follow something that's a little bit more
standardized in nature might be able to allow them to better identify what they are truly
dealing with at the time.
And in the officers who completed our survey, which we greatly appreciate, they were from
one department.
We had over 400 officers complete our survey.
And when we asked them the type of training that they had on human trafficking, only 17%
learned about human trafficking in the academy.
And they had all been through the same academy.
So less than half said that they learned about human trafficking through annual mandatory
training, but they only had a couple of hours on that.
And that's not going to be consistent across all officers.
But what's really interesting is the diversity in the way that police officers are receiving
information about human trafficking.
So some officers said they heard about it in roll call.
Some went to a seminar or a conference and learned about human trafficking there.
Some heard about it from a guest speaker.
My favorite was some officers learned about it through truckers against trafficking.
So, you know, it's a resource, right?
Videos, the Internet.
But these variety of approaches is really inconsistent.
And I would imagine as an officer, I would be really confused about what my directives
are, especially if I have a different information than another officer.
And it is.
This is, to me, human trafficking is a relatively new terminology, even though it's been around
for a while.
And we conducted a survey of Pennsylvanians in 2018.
The average citizen isn't really sure what human trafficking is.
So to support what Emily was saying, citizens themselves, who may be victims of human trafficking,
may not have the words to say, yes, I'm a victim.
And they may be coerced or threatened in ways that an officer can't see where they're fearful
of telling that officer and reaching out for help.
And so the officer can make a profound difference in someone's life by having this information
and being able to recognize it.
OK, I want to step back for a second.
You said something that these were all the officers were from the same agency.
Is that correct?
Yes.
OK, so you had a couple of hundred officers, but only 17.
So again, you're assuming they were all more exposed to the same thing.
But only 17 percent of them said, yeah, I've received some sort of training in the academy
where 83 percent either didn't remember it or were asleep at the time.
Well, that also could be because officers were a variety of ages and had a variety
of years on the job.
So it could be that the human trafficking component is relatively new in the academy.
OK, I'm sorry.
All officers may not have been exposed to it.
So maybe it's a newer component.
My mistake.
I thought these were all academy trainees.
I apologize.
So I'm going to retract that sleeping comment.
Oh, no, I was just going to say we were so fortunate to have so many officers want to
respond to our survey and chat with us about it.
Oh, yeah.
We're very grateful.
Four hundred is a great number.
OK, so I'm going to get back on track here.
When you did your research, again, you were looking at the impact of training and if whether
they had it or not and officer experience on the and their ability to ID human trafficking.
Can you provide basically an overview of what your study did?
So, sure, I'll jump in there.
So it was really interesting because we had collected survey data from police officers
and our first paper, we were just kind of trying to understand how police officers viewed
human trafficking, like how would they define it?
Can they recognize it in scenarios?
And in a subsequent paper, we wanted to explore whether training made a difference because
we were looking at this variety of resources where police officers were getting their information
about human trafficking and we were wondering, well, does it make a difference?
And it does.
No matter where they were getting the information from, it did make a difference on whether
they could accurately identify human trafficking in the scenarios that we provided.
We published a subsequent paper where we were curious whether it was training or whether
they had had the opportunity to investigate or otherwise be involved in a human trafficking
case that made a difference.
And what we found there was, again, training mattered more than experience investigating
a human trafficking case and what we were looking at is whether training or experience
investigating a human trafficking case helped an officer be better able to accurately identify
whether human trafficking was occurring in a scenario that we gave, if that makes sense.
Oh, yeah, that that makes perfect sense.
I'm paying closer attention now, apparently.
So OK, so officers that might might have actually had some exposure that kind of.
So it wasn't experience in years.
It was experience in dealing with this type of event.
But that didn't help.
OK, again, I could imagine that the reason is, is they didn't do it frequently where
getting the training, even if it's not intense weeks of training, maybe that's what made
the difference. It absolutely could be.
And by the way, we did officer we did measure officer years on the job.
And that had no effect on whether officers could accurately identify human trafficking
in the scenarios. But yeah, I mean, if you told me something five years ago and,
you know, all of a sudden it's in front of me, I may not remember all of that.
I'm a human. That's not how my brain works or retains information.
But if you're giving me something that I can practice more frequently,
I'm going to develop an expertise in it.
I'm going to get better at it.
But, you know, if I'm not exercising that or practicing it and reinforcing it,
it's going to be very hard for me to remember everything I learned.
I'm only going to retain a certain portion. Right.
And officers are human beings, too.
They're only expected to retain so much information,
which is why one of the things we recommend is that consistent training.
Just keep reminding. Right.
It's always good to have a refresher and.
Revisit things that we've learned to reinforce those concepts.
Has it has there been any any attempt to do that in the agencies in Pennsylvania?
We're because you're you're doing your work down in Pennsylvania.
You've got hundreds and hundreds of the agencies.
Now, this is off your research.
This is not a question about your research, but have you seen any agencies
trying to give refreshers, whether it's, you know, as you say, in roll call,
talk about it again or in service training?
Or is it maybe, you know, here's a video link to this thing for a refresher.
Anything like that going on?
You caught me, Scott. I don't know.
And my phone, a friend who's right across the hall for me is on sabbatical.
But our our colleague, the amazing Dr.
C.U. Lu is studying training curriculum for police departments.
So she would know.
And unfortunately, I do not have a quick answer to that.
OK, I didn't mean to stump you, but that's
but this is another area then that no seriously about this, this topic
or any of these topics that are infrequently handled by the officers.
There's been a great debate.
And I keep going back to this on some of the podcasts of, you know,
the officer involved the active shooter situations,
where training every year or two for a day.
And there's an argument that that's just not going to make it stack.
And so I don't want to get into that, you know, depth into that area.
But it's the same thing here, you know, training in the academy.
And if you don't get it refreshed once in a while,
because you're not dealing with it frequently enough, it's not going to stack.
So that's just, you know, one of those things that policing has to deal with.
OK, so getting back to the research, how people learn.
Yeah. Right.
They're not learning and they're not retaining in that, you know,
constantly doing it again.
I use the simple example.
It's not like riding a bike.
You're not doing it frequently enough to to recall what it is.
I I want to get on my soapbox for a minute, Scott.
I mean, I feel passionately about this.
Police are always asked to do more with less.
Any new societal ill, any, you know, anything that comes about,
it falls on the shoulders of the police to deal with.
And many times they're not given more resources to do it.
In Pennsylvania, in particular, we have more police departments
than I think any other state in the nation of the ballpark
17,500 police departments in the United States.
Pennsylvania has 1100.
And that means that most of our police departments in Pennsylvania,
about 730 last time I checked, are in small and rural areas
where they have 10 officers or fewer.
They're serving populations of 10,000 or less.
And they still have the same problems as the larger urban counterparts.
They still have human.
We talked to small and rural police chiefs in 2020,
and they were talking about identifying human
trafficking in their communities saying, hey, we have it here.
It's not just in big urban areas.
It's everywhere.
And we don't have the resources we need to help people.
So I'm going to get off my soapbox.
But my I just I feel so passionately about this, Scott.
Sorry, I was going to say, I think that really ties back into
the earlier question about, you know, why might standardized training
be so important, right, because we are seeing a disparity
in how the cases are actually handled, right.
And smaller and more rural departments are going to especially be affected by that.
They don't have the dedicated units.
They don't have the specialized task forces.
They don't have because they don't have the personnel, right.
They're much smaller.
And so creating more standardized training
is allowing those agencies to have a baseline toolkit of
how can our patrol officers, how can our supervisors, our investigators, right?
We're all working from the same framework.
How can we best identify what we are seeing on the streets
or wherever we're running into it?
You know, you said something and it strikes me that a lot of
police agencies in the rural areas are also in counties that are fundamentally rural.
And the district attorney might have one other, you know, assistant DA.
And so and I know this is not your area that you study,
but it just makes me think that I'm wondering if district attorneys,
you know, need the same kind of, you know, eye opening training to the
the existence of this problem in their areas and would they be able to handle it?
You know, like, OK, a robbery, a burglary, a DWI or something like that.
It's just, you know, an area that goes beyond just the police.
But it's going to start with them.
OK, and getting back to the research study I was reading,
because you've you've done several publications on this topic
in the discussion section of the paper you wrote.
And I want to make sure I quote this right.
The adaptability of human trafficking
emphasizes the need for ongoing training and education.
OK, so they're adapting to what the police are doing.
And that scares the hell out of me a little bit.
Police are the most creative people I know.
I will say this again and again.
It's so true.
Police have a unique ability to think outside the box.
They're very creative.
I know they can stay on top of it.
And I'll give you an example.
I had the great pleasure to talk to a police chief in a small town.
And he was telling me a story about how there was a business in his small town.
And every day he'd, you know, walk around.
He would he would go out on patrol as chief.
He would walk around and talk to people and talk to businesses.
And every day he'd go into this business.
And he just had that gut feeling that something wasn't right.
They had a back room and the door was always closed.
And it was just off, you know.
And he said, you know, I there I couldn't prove anything.
I didn't have any evidence.
He says, but I could see, you know, workers were being switched out.
Right. There was evidence that something not right was happening there.
But there wasn't evidence of a crime.
He says, so I made it a point to go in there every day
and talk to the people working every single day and made my presence known.
Let them know that I was there.
I was there to help.
He says, and eventually he says he believes that his presence there
deterred some would be customers. Right.
So business wasn't doing so well because of the police presence.
And the business eventually moved out.
Now, that's some out of the box creative thinking that doesn't cost anything.
Right. Just something that he could do on a normal patrol as a police chief.
Yeah. Right. So I think something even small like that
in an area that doesn't have resources can have profound implications.
Oh, so there we go.
Speaking of implications, what are some some implications for police
practice, personnel or police leaders when it comes to human trafficking?
I think from from this research project specifically,
there are a few things that are like big takeaways. Right.
So the first thing training matters and it matters big time.
You cannot just assume that years on the job are going to prepare somebody
for recognizing trafficking.
You know, we just talked about kind of how how adaptable offenders are. Right.
And there's research that talks about how we saw a big shift
into online presence during the time of covid. Right.
And so officers continually being trained about new forms
and new ways to identify is so important. Right.
So it's just it's a need.
I think, you know, we kind of touched on smaller and more rural departments
would really also benefit from more standardized training being introduced.
Trafficking cases, while abundant,
might be very rare for an individual officer to run into. Right.
They they might go years without ever seeing one.
They might never see one. Right.
But but creating a standardized training around this gives everybody the same tools.
It gives everybody the same knowledge.
Officers are not left to guess or hope for the best in these situations.
When it comes to identifying victims
and something for me, going more towards the victimology side. Right.
And something I think that can be overlooked
is the need for strong partnerships with law enforcement agencies
and their local victim service providers.
Recognition and and response to victims doesn't just stop
at that initial encounter and the agencies that build these connections.
We have both academic and national research
that shows that the cases are documented more accurately.
The officers receive better feedback and the help that the victim themselves
receives. Right. They it's just so important to.
If you don't already have them, establish them.
If you do have them, strengthen them
between law enforcement officers and those those local victim service
organizations, it just can't emphasize it enough.
Right. That gives officers the the knowledge of who to call,
when they should call them and then how they can coordinate safely.
And that's something that's so impactful for the individuals
who are experiencing this trafficking.
One last question. Do you you study this?
But do you know of any any nationally recognized locally state level
training that is you know, is standardized,
that could be picked up and moved someplace else?
I don't truly off the top of my head, I don't.
I was hoping I was hoping if you said yes, that we could add it to the show notes
that there is an institute somewhere that developed, you know,
a day training program for, you know, an eight hour program for officers,
for an agency to just tap into that.
But that might be something that, you know, again, these these these institutes,
these, you know, victim service, you know, whatever.
They need to coordinate this in this in a way or just, you know,
maybe a state level, it's being done already, I can hope for.
But this has been an eye opening conversation about a topic that I'm hoping
that everybody that listens will appreciate.
And it just something that's just, you know, new.
I hate to use the word fascinating, that just doesn't seem appropriate.
But Dr. Gibbs and Dr.
Strohaker, I really appreciate your time on the podcast today.
Another another thing to throw into the discussion,
you can insert it anywhere, Scott.
If if truckers are organizing
to help teach police about human trafficking,
we know that there is a need to develop consistent training for police officers.
Incredible.
And that's that's that should strike at the heart of a lot of the police,
you know, leadership out there in the country that if truckers are doing this
for us, you know, we're missing out.
So again, thanks very much, Jennifer and Emily.
I really appreciate your time.
Thank you for having us.
That's it for this episode of the police in service training podcast.
I want to thank you, the listener, for spending your valuable time here.
If you like what you've heard, please tell a friend to subscribe
on Apple Podcasts or wherever they get their podcasts.
And please take a moment to review this podcast.
If you have any questions or comments, positive or negative,
or if you think I should cover a specific topic,
feel free to send me an email, which you can find in the show notes.
Or you can find me on blue sky using the handle at police in service dot bsky dot social.
Thanks very much and have a great day.