Remember the impactful moments that change your life course? For our guest, Kyle Baker, his was a case involving two young girls, one lost in the world of drugs and commercial sex work while the other girl's life abruptly upended. This grim encounter lit a flame within Kyle, igniting a life-long journey battling human trafficking. Join us as he shares the invaluable lessons he's gained throughout his career, revealing how advocates and law enforcement can collaborate more effectively.
In our riveting conversation, we navigate the intricacies of working with survivors and law enforcement. Kyle emphasizes the urgent need to grasp the understanding of victimhood, trauma, and trauma bonds. He explores why the approach to combating human trafficking requires a different lens than traditional law enforcement investigations. Kyle expresses the necessity for quality training delivered by experienced professionals and survivors. Join us and equip yourself with the knowledge to make a real difference in the fight against human trafficking.
Remember the impactful moments that change your life course? For our guest, Kyle Baker, his was a case involving two young girls, one lost in the world of drugs and commercial sex work while the other girl's life abruptly upended. This grim encounter lit a flame within Kyle, igniting a life-long journey battling human trafficking. Join us as he shares the invaluable lessons he's gained throughout his career, revealing how advocates and law enforcement can collaborate more effectively.
In our riveting conversation, we navigate the intricacies of working with survivors and law enforcement. Kyle emphasizes the urgent need to grasp the understanding of victimhood, trauma, and trauma bonds. He explores why the approach to combating human trafficking requires a different lens than traditional law enforcement investigations. Kyle expresses the necessity for quality training delivered by experienced professionals and survivors. Join us and equip yourself with the knowledge to make a real difference in the fight against human trafficking.
You know the why human trafficking work is needed To fight for the freedom of modern day slaves. But love, passion, commitment isn't all you need to be an effective and successful anti-trafficking advocate. Learn the how. I'm Dr Celia Williamson, Director of the Human Trafficking and Social Justice Institute at the University of Toledo. Welcome to the Emancipation Nation podcast, where I'll provide you with the latest and best methods, policy and practice discussed by experienced experts in the field, so that you can cut through the noise, save time and be about the work of saving lives.
Speaker 1:Welcome to the Emancipation Nation episode 188. Today, my guest is Kyle Baker, and he really is an expert in human trafficking, particularly having worked with law enforcement, having trained law enforcement. He has a certified human trafficking course and he has worked hundreds of commercial sexual investigations. So because he is a teacher, a trainer around the state of California, he has some lessons that he has learned over time about building relationships with law enforcement as we are advocates working in the anti-trafficking field, and some of the barriers on both sides and maybe some of the ways that we could and law enforcement could work together better. So I think this is a very important conversation. So thank you so much for being here, Kyle.
Speaker 2:Celia, thank you so much for having me and good morning from California. It's 6 am here, Excited to be here and chat with you a little bit about human trafficking today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Kyle. First of all, tell us how you got involved in this particular issue.
Speaker 2:So, to be 100% honest, totally by fate, in 2016. So in 2016, I was selected as a detective. I work for a police department in the Bay Area in California, Almost if you drew a line between San Francisco and Sacramento, I'm somewhere along that line, so right in the middle of a very, very busy area. And so in 2016, I was selected as a narcotics detective and, of course, I grew up watching all the cop movies and I thought it was going to be the craziest, coolest thing. We're going to take down these huge drug kingpins and such.
Speaker 2:And one day my boss walks into me and he says hey, Kyle, I have something for you. I'm like oh cool, you know what? What are we doing today? You know what kind of drugs? Who is it? And he's like well, it's actually, it looks like a human trafficking case. And I'm like, well, what is that?
Speaker 2:And what had happened is one of my partners, who usually worked those, was out of town. And he said, hey, here's where we're at. We have a 15 year old girl right now that's currently in juvenile hall for some unrelated charges and she just disclosed to one of the counselors there that a couple of nights ago she was taken to a hotel in a nearby city that started off in our city and she was photographed and she had those photographs put online and there were drugs involved and we're not really sure what's going on. So I said, okay, well, let me, let me give it a shot. Well, sure enough, that was my first human trafficking case and what it involved was a 15 year old who had run away from home. She was picked up by two guys that kind of loosely knew her she had sadly been involved in the commercial sex work prior to that and that night they got a hotel room. She ended up texting one of her best friends who was in volleyball practice at a nearby school. They picked up a third guy, then picked up the second girl and they all ended up in this really horrible CD hotel room. One of the girls watched one of the guys shooting heroin into his arm and asked to try it for the first time, and that led to a night of photographs and a night of commercial sex posting.
Speaker 2:Now, luckily, in that particular night, no commercial sex acts ended up taking place. However, here in California they certainly met the threshold for human trafficking and that was the first time I was really exposed to what human trafficking is, what it somewhat looks like vulnerable types of populations, how individuals can truly manipulate others and just how prolific it is. So that's what launched me into this and now has been my career passion for gosh the last seven years to where I've worked on human trafficking task force. I've testified multiple times as an expert in court. I now travel and teach around the state of California for multiple organizations. I speak to community groups. It's been one heck of a ride and I'm excited to be where I am now and truly sharing some of the successes but, more importantly, the failures over the years.
Speaker 1:And so, kyle, I mean I could hear the initial passion in your voice about you know, I'm gonna get in there and we're gonna do these big cases, man, and that sounds so exciting and so cool. And then, instead of like what you envisioned, something stole your heart and caused you to have this passion. But what was it about that experience that made you then you know, it changed the trajectory of your life, I guess to do this?
Speaker 2:So it was two things and really it was the two victims in that case. And what was really interesting, Celia is the two victims in that case the original one that was picked up as a runaway and the one that came from the high school. So the runaway she was what we've all spoken about many a times, where you see a lot of those red flags, those areas of vulnerability. She came from a broken home, she had abuse in her past, she had had drug use, so she was kind of on one hand. On the other hand, the girl from the high school had none of that inner history. She came from a good home, good family. She had never been involved in commercial sex work, she had never been exposed to drugs.
Speaker 1:Hey, before we continue the episode, I wanna let you know of three courses I offer Effective case management with human trafficking survivors, the TNT survivor journey groups and the best life human trafficking prevention course for girls that are at risk. Raising awareness around human trafficking is a great start Hanging up flyers, having fundraisers, doing human trafficking presentations or even joining an anti-trafficking coalition or commission or student group but it simply isn't enough. If you or your group aren't touching the lives of survivors or those at risk, and meaningful, in healing ways, you're missing a critical component. I want you to get back to the reasons you joined the anti-trafficking fight in the first place, the reason you joined that coalition or that commission or that student group. You wanted to make a difference, but maybe you didn't know exactly what to do and so presentations seem doable. Why? Because you had the knowledge and skills to do it.
Speaker 1:Well, if you're really ready to get directly involved and help change the lives of others for the better, then this is an important message for you. I have almost 30 years' experience working with survivors and studying the issue, and I'm circling back to help you become effective and confident in your ability to work with survivors of commercial sexual violence. I wrote a few books, developed some courses that would love to train you on how to be involved directly. Just go to my website, celiawaysoncom, and check out my webinars. Learn a little more about how you can become knowledgeable and skilled to actually work with survivors using my trauma-informed courses. And now on with the podcast.
Speaker 2:When I sat down and talked to both of them about their experience, the trauma that had occurred from that event was very apparent in both of them, and so that was the first time that I saw how human trafficking, how exploiters, can truly affect victims. And for me, going from what I thought I was gonna be doing, which was running around chasing drugs, I found that it's sad that this exists, but there's a huge man's satisfaction in being able to do what we can for those victims, because they're real. They're real people. There's faces, there's experiences and there's trauma. So for me, I thought you know what this is? I think maybe what I'm supposed to be doing, and it really just kind of took off after that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of difficult to look in a little young face I say young face teenagers and walk away to do something else. I mean that's pretty hard to do. I can see how your passion took over. Did you happen to see? I just this question popped in my head out of the blue. Did you happen to see the movie Sound of Freedom? I did, okay, because your experiences seem to match some of my experiences and that movie really talked about really little kids in another country. I mean, what's your opinion about that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought you might ask that because I'm sure, just like you, I've been getting tons of questions about it from family, from friends, from coworkers, and my message to that has been somewhat simple in that you know, cinematically good movie, it kind of grips you and pulls you in and I think that it's important in the sense that it does display some of the unfortunate things that happen in other countries and I will never dispel that and I will never try to minimize that. However, there's a big however with that, because the truth is is it's not a reflection at all about what happens here in our country. And what I tell people all the time, especially when I'm speaking to community groups, is I promise you, no matter where you live, what city you're in I don't care if it's rural, I don't care if it's huge, urban, I don't care what the socioeconomics look like, I don't care about any of that I promise you.
Speaker 2:You have seen victims of human trafficking or commercial sex crimes in your daily life, at Starbucks, at the grocery store, at wherever. And the truth is is you're much more likely to be exploited by somebody who contacts you on social media and tells you you're pretty, we should go out and make money. Then somebody's snatching a kid off of the street corner, and so I think it's really important for folks here in the US. I love that there's the push and people are getting aware and they're more hungry for information. I think that's great, but in all reality we have to understand that there's a lot of built-in vulnerabilities in our young populations here in the US and a lot of times, sadly, those young victims are out searching for something and those exploiters know what that is and they're able to capitalize on it. So overall, I mean a good movie for what I think some of the things that accomplished. However, I think it's important for us here as moms and dads and brothers and sisters and teachers and just everyday folks understand what human trafficking looks like here.
Speaker 1:I mean 100% agreed. So I just like to ask people, because I don't want America running off thinking that that is what trafficking looks like. That is one piece, one sliver, but there's things happening in your own community that you could open your eyes to, so I'm so glad that you cleared that up. So let's talk about some of the law enforcement things that they could do better maybe some barriers or how could we best collaborate with law enforcement and they collaborate with us?
Speaker 2:One of my favorite topics to talk about because I've had to learn a lot over the years and I'll take this in two strokes, the first one being, I think overall as a profession, we have progressed significantly over the years to where the message certainly is now to look at and treat commercial sex workers as victims and understanding that the old adage of well, they must be wanting to do that or they could just pack up and leave. I think that we've come a long way, learning from survivors, learning from victim advocates, learning from people like me that have fallen on my face a few times over the years. We've gained that understanding of that victimhood, that trauma, those trauma bonds. I think we're getting there. We're not all the way there yet by any means, but I think if you look over the last couple of decades where we are now, we're progressing a little bit. But, with that being said, one of the biggest pieces that I truly preach and I harp on as much as I can if you look at any let's call it traditional law enforcement type of investigation I'll use a robbery as an example. Well, if I go to the scene of a robbery, more than likely the way that that call for service is handled here in California is probably the same that it's going to be handled in Texas or Oklahoma or Florida. The book is kind of written on how to handle a robbery as a police officer. We're still kind of writing the book on how to investigate human trafficking and commercial sex crimes because it's so dynamic, because there's so much that goes into it and the piece that I truly try to get across to police officers the most is we cannot do it alone as law enforcement. We cannot, and the approach of multi-disciplinary collaboration has to be the lens that we look at this through.
Speaker 2:When I started working almost exclusively with human trafficking six, seven years ago, I knew that these wonderful people called victim advocates existed and we had sometimes had cross, either training or cross.
Speaker 2:You know we would work with these folks on different types of cases, but it was never really intimately, it was never really proper. And as I started to crest these cases I learned very quickly that there are some already built-in barriers between law enforcement and victims of human trafficking and the truth is a lot of those are created by law enforcement over the years. For a long time we treated commercial sex work and victims as prostitutes and it's taken a long time for us to start to gain that trust back. So I think that that's a huge component in understanding that a victim advocate can be very, very vital to gain that trust quicker, because it's not somebody in uniform, it's not law enforcement. So that's definitely one of the barriers in this type of work is understanding that you know us as law enforcement. When we take a case on, we meet a victim. We got a little bit of work to do right and in gaining that trust and one of the best tools to combat that is certainly working with folks from victim advocacy groups.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, let me just comment on that. First of all, I love that you mentioned trauma bond, because it can look very different to somebody who doesn't understand trauma bond. It looks like somebody who's participating in there. You know they want to do this, they want to be there, and so if you don't understand trauma bond, then you're looking at a picture of something that you're going to assess in the wrong way. I also love that you said, hey, I've made mistakes fallen on my face. You know I certainly have.
Speaker 1:I remember back in the day doing some presentations and conferences where law enforcement was quite frankly offended. If you said, hey, maybe that you aren't doing this, maybe this is triggering, maybe this is re traumatizing people vis-a-vis abuse is slightly really offended In my profession and social work when we meet people and they say, hey, social workers screwed up my life, we go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand. So we've come to accept that all of us aren't doing what we should. We do the best with what we have, but when you know better, you do better. So law enforcement coming to some realization that we have some growth to do.
Speaker 1:But the key thing that you said so far was really it's multidisciplinary and if the listeners go back and listen to any of these episodes, they'll hear people say collaboration, multidisciplinary. Those are the people who are wise and know what to do. The people who talk about I can do it, my agency can do it. Those are the people that really have some growing to do. So I'm just excited that you talked about multidisciplinary, because that's really the way to be most successful. So let me, let me, let you continue. Any other barriers?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I think that the other component to that is I certainly challenge my victim advocate friends to also understand that some of their perceptions of law enforcement or some of their past experiences shouldn't let them not get to know their local officers and the investigators that they're working with, because that relationship, I think, is extremely key. I had a case one that's adjudicated the exploiters currently in prison where the first time that I met the victim she was 18 years old at the time and we came across her through some investigative steps and that particular day where we first met her, we didn't have access to a victim advocate that day and so we just kind of had to roll with it the best that we could. And she was certainly in that phase of the victim not wanting anything to do with law enforcement. She was branded and tattooed, with her exploiters tattooed. She was dressed as you would expect somebody involved in this type of work to be and she was very protective because she was bonded to her exploiter.
Speaker 2:Well, a few days later her exploiter broke into her apartment as she was kind of going through this phase of trying to get away from him. He broke into her apartment, pistol, whipped her new boyfriend, who was not involved in commercial sex or a Pamp or an exploiter, held a gun to his head and ended up being arrested that night and that incident kind of helped her get over that kind of hump of wanting to protect him. Well, so one of the very first things that I did was bring a victim advocate in on that conversation and that case. And that's one of those cool stories where post investigation, post court etc. She actually got out of the life. So I credit that 100 percent to this amazing victim advocate that works for the DA's office here in the county that I work in. And it wasn't easy, for it was definitely quite the road. So I just I wanted to throw that out there because you know those, those successful stories are really built around these relationships.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I mean it's. How do you you know, you've worked hundreds of these cases how do you, kyle, stay sort of like healthy? How do you take care of yourself? How do you see this? Look into these faces, yeah, and see this tragedy and what they've been through, and you and you know by now the the hard road to healing that it's going to take and what you know. How do you take care of yourself? Haven't seen all that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate that question. Well, the first thing is it took a lot of years to understand this truth, and reality is that you are not going to be able to help everybody, and that is a difficult thing as somebody who's in a profession where that's kind of the guiding reason to why most cops get into this profession is that they want to help people in some way. But, as you know truly quote rescuing a victim the truth is is that a victim's never going to leave their situation until they're ready. We, we in this profession, in law enforcement and advocacy and social work, we can do all that we can. We can provide the steps, we can provide the path, but at the end of the day, the decision does end up having to lie with that individual.
Speaker 2:So for me, over the years, when it comes to you know my personal feelings that's been the most difficult thing, honestly, is that I met so many victims over the years that I just I want to just grab them and just take them out of the situation, put them somewhere safe and be like, hey, take a look from the outside, looking in, and look what, look what you're doing to yourself and look what's happening. So once, once, I've kind of settled into that and knowing that, hey, us, collaboratively, we, we can only do the best that we can, that that's somewhat helped a little bit. But the truth is is understanding that I do have a profession that I'm very passionate about, but I do have an entire life outside of my profession and I think that that's really important. I have a family, I have young children, I have hobbies, we like to travel, and so I can't say that my brain always turns off when I'm not at work. However, I've learned over the years to kind of have that balance a little bit, and I think that that's extremely important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we can all take a page out of your book because we, I think a lot of people are trying to establish that work life balance or trying to have some joy in their own life after they've seen this type of tragedy. So what would you recommend you know to other people, particularly involved in law enforcement, the people who show up first, first responders, and they see you know what's happening, what. What would you advise them in terms of their own self care or in terms of training they may need or anything that would help them do their job better?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'll take the training on first. So I talked to a lot of police agencies and I've been very fortunate over the years to talk to chiefs of police and higher ups at different agencies, especially in our area, and I cannot harp enough that the fundamental thing that we have to do for our police officers is we have to train them. And we have to specifically train our patrol officers, the guys and gals who are going to go to that call for service at a hotel at two o'clock in the morning. When somebody calls and says you know what? We saw this. It just doesn't look quite right. This girl, she looked really young, like what's going on. And so to train our officers and deputies across the country and be able to recognize these situations and understand how to properly investigate them. And the second thing that I always kind of throw in there is okay, it's really great if you train your people. I think that's extremely important and I have a huge proponent that that training it should be from folks maybe like me, that have had experience, that are cops et cetera. But you should also have some training that comes from victim advocates. You should have some training that comes from survivors. So whenever I teach and train. I do everything that I can to have a survivor there to hear their story, because I mean, let's face it, celia, I can talk about this stuff and I can share experiences, but when you hear it from the mouth of somebody that's lived it, totally different.
Speaker 2:So we have to train our officers and then we have to have pathways in our police agencies on how to navigate these cases. So, okay, great, what if an officer does a traffic stop and it has all these red flags of some type of trafficking situation, but ultimately you can't get anywhere on that day. You don't, nobody's talking to you, there's nothing to take anybody to jail for, the victim doesn't, or a perceived victim doesn't want to talk to you, and you end up having to let these folks go. Well, what's the next step? Who can you refer that to?
Speaker 2:So I think that's extremely important for police departments train your people and have pathways to navigate these cases. And then the last component to that and this is something law enforcement has definitely improved on is our wellness programs for officers, and here at the agency I work for I work for Pittsburgh Police Department we have a relatively robust wellness program which we're continuing to grow, where we have access to peer support officers. We just recently built a brand new gym that we'll be doing on duty workouts on, which I think is really important, and so it's this overall notion that officers have to take care of their mental health and they have to take care of their physical health, so that all comes into play right, because if I am a more fit officer and I'm a more mentally healthy officer, I'm gonna be able to deal with these situations better. So it really all does link together.
Speaker 1:So, kyle, if a police force or somebody who's advocating for police to be trained, I mean, are you willing, do you do training outside of California?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I haven't had the opportunity to travel out of California yet just because there's honestly so much training to be done here in California. However, I'm always certainly willing to do so and, on top of that, I really enjoy. I love training cops. I've been doing it for gosh a decade, not only in human trafficking but other areas, and now human trafficking is what I teach and travel or I should say, travel and teach now but I love speaking and talking to groups that are not law enforcement as well.
Speaker 2:I've done several trainings in our county with different social work groups, with different community groups, with different advocate groups, and I think that that's really important because, again, I truly feel one of my missions now is to continue to break down those barriers. We kind of spoke about that. Cops care and they do a pretty good job, and sometimes we just need to be reminded as police officers that these type of cases involve that collaboration. So I'm certainly always available, definitely find me on LinkedIn and I'll definitely shoot you some of my contact information, but I'm a resource and I love sharing things and, again, I got a whole lot of things that I learned from over the years.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and just can you let us know where somebody can contact you? In case you know they don't see what I might put in the description, but if somebody wanted to email you for a particular training or message, you would they go to LinkedIn, or do you have a site?
Speaker 2:LinkedIn's the best place to reach me and you can just search my name, kyle Baker and Human Trafficking, and it'll pop up Also my email address, which I'll give you that you can toss out there it's kbaker3071 at gmailcom. That's the main email that I use for any human trafficking related stuff outside of work kind of. But yeah, I'm definitely available and you know, love to have conversations. I've gotten to speak to a lot of people, especially the last couple of years, as I've started to train more and teach more and gotten to advise on some pretty cool projects. And now you know I'm super humbled and excited to be working with TAT Truckers Against Trafficking.
Speaker 2:That's a new venture for me as a law enforcement advisor. They are an absolutely amazing organization all across North America that are truly boots on the ground and training Just. I think they're the last figure I saw was upwards of a million people in the trucking industry and they're now working with moving companies. They just have really taken over the transportation industry and I'm super excited to work with them on you know, projects and getting to know them a little bit better. But they're definitely an organization that has kind of the right mindset and just true passion.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, thank you so much, and Truckers Against Trafficking is an amazing organization. I'm so glad that you are working with them and thank you so much for your time today and for just telling us more about human trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, that you know law enforcement can do better, how we can work best with law enforcement, and your wisdom on collaboration, on talking always talking to victims and survivors and advocates, and always getting their input, always including them in the work that we do. That message came through loud and clear. So thank you so much, kyle, again, and appreciate what you do and glad that you are traveling with your family and trying to stay as healthy as you can when you can. So thank you, I appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:Thank you very much. It was an absolute humbling opportunity. I loved being here, and the last thing I'll leave you with that I always share with folks when I'm speaking about human trafficking is we must not panic, but we must be aware and I think that that's a very important thing as we move forward is understanding what this stuff is. But let's not panic, let's just be better and better educated.
Speaker 1:That was Kyle Baker, and he is an expert in the law enforcement field, coming from that perspective, working with survivors of trafficking and now teaching and training other law enforcement officers how to do the same while he is working, respecting and honoring the experiences of other professions and the lived experience and expertise of lived experience survivors. So I think Kyle is the epitome of what we're looking for as we collaborate with law enforcement. He gives us hope, for some of us that have been jaded, perhaps even by our experiences with law enforcement, that there are law enforcement officers out there doing a great job that are passionate about what they do, that seek more knowledge, that are interested in collaboration, and so let's do the same. Are you always seeking more knowledge? Are you respectful and honoring of other professions that are at the table? Do you respect and honor and include lived experience individuals? Do you collaborate? Do you even think collaboration is important?
Speaker 1:Because, as I said, if you listen to these episodes, one theme rains loud and clear, and that is the importance of collaboration. If you look over any social movement, not only in the US but around the world, you'll see collaboration. You can't do it alone. You have to allow others at the table to help and then honor and respect what they bring to the table. That is the key to success. Until next time, the fight continues.