CityServe announces annual anti-human trafficking campaign

Mar. 1—Inside their 3201 F St. headquarters, CityServe officials announced on Wednesday the start of its annual Project Rescue Awareness Campaign, a month-long offensive poised at combating human trafficking in Bakersfield.

Outside CityServe's office, a single public Golden Empire Transit bus was adorned with a campaign banner, which includes in bold a number to the national human trafficking hotline and the emergency help text number. These banners will be slapped onto 10 buses embarking on 14 routes throughout the city until the end of March.

“Anyone who sees these buses and sees something happening or thought they saw something happen,” said Cynthia Giumarra, the Project Rescue coordinator and director of the Women's Ministry at Canyon Hills Assembly of God Church. “They can call these numbers and report.”

Project Rescue is an annual affair between CityServe, Canyon Hills Assembly of God Church and the city of Bakersfield that since 2012 has sought to remind people that human trafficking is a real problem in Kern, and to raise money for organizations looking to stop it.

When they began the campaign 11 years ago, there was pushback from people, Giumarra said, who insisted “that doesn't really happen here.”

“We now know that human trafficking is happening all around us,” Giumarra said.

Despite a recent drop in cases between 2019 and 2021, reported cases of human trafficking are still nearly 25 percent higher today than they were in 2015, according to statistics from the Public Policy Institute of California.

Bakersfield Police Department Chief Greg Terry said that last year in Bakersfield there were “over 50 traffickers” arrested.

“The number of victims they impacted, you know, far exceeds that number — that is the unfortunate reality,” Terry said. “We in law enforcement and in our community have a responsibility to do more.”

Last month, Terry said, his department joined a statewide sting in which hundreds of traffickers, including two in Bakersfield, were apprehended.

“Human trafficking preys on the very vulnerable population,” Terry said. “And (for) those that are defenseless — it subjects them to very demeaning and violent and really soul-crushing experiences that they're forced to live with.”

Representatives for Assemblyman Vince Fong, R-Bakersfield; state Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield; and Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield were in attendance.

Kern County Board of Supervisors Chairman and District Three Supervisor Jeff Flores, who attended the event, noted that the board recently approved a 22 percent pay raise for county detention deputies, to address their high vacancy rate.

“I'm totally appreciative of law enforcement and the county of Kern is doing our part to invest in more sheriff deputies, to (have) us (provide) the strongest law enforcement agency in the Central Valley,” Flores said. “Not to bore you with budget details but what that means is we are moving deputies from detentions onto the front lines.”

City Serve and its partners will host several events in the coming weeks, including its Red and White Gala on March 17 and Project Rescue's 9th Annual Red Bucket Day on March 31. Proceeds will go toward Kern County's Coalition Against Human Trafficking.

If you suspect someone is a victim of human trafficking, go online to https://humantraffickinghotline.org/en. For more information about events held by CityServe and its partners, visit https://cityserve.us/.