Unedited YouTube Transcript

welcome first
I need a megaphone we have a full room today so welcome
thank you for being here we're gonna jump right into things and uh first I want to give a thank you
to catering to love for providing the food today
and a special thank you to Vicki Atkins for providing for donating the eggs that created this so yeah
thank you so we have a spotlight agency this month
which is rescue her and so I'm going to have them come up and tell you a little bit about their
organization and what they do hi good morning
can you guys hear me okay okay awesome well it's exciting to be back we have
another staff member that comes here every month and so I haven't seen the Fort Worth crew in a long time so I'm
pumped to be here um so yeah like she mentioned um we're rescue her so we exist to empower
survivors of sex trafficking to live in Freedom and so we work with adult female
survivors of sex trafficking all throughout DFW so not just Tarrant
County we serve Denton County part of Collin County Dallas County and kind of
there Beyond and so um we do that through crisis response and long-term
advocacy so for our crisis response um think of either recent exploitation a
heightened safety risk something where we're needing to intervene almost immediately
um where long term it can be someone who was trafficked maybe a year ago five
years ago when they were a youth and they're just now ready to get services and get help I'm kind of the long
Spectrum our services are indefinite they have no end so we will serve a
Survivor as long as they want to work with us and so um that helps us be really creative when
they move from shelter to shelter or program to program we get to kind of follow them wherever they go
um so we operate out of What's called the Open Table model so we're not a
shelter we're not a drop-in center we're all field based and so what the OpenTable model is if it's us and the
survivors sitting at the head of the table they tell us what they want and what their goals are and what they need
and then we bring people like you guys to the table to help meet those needs and so it is so crucial and important
for us to know you guys and what you guys are doing and so we do have a table outside I would love to connect with you
guys um after the meeting to just get to learn more about what you guys offer so that if our clients need that we can get
connected um and so in our long-term program our survivors are connected with a volunteer
Mentor they come to our survivor support group and we also on both crisis and
long term offer Financial Services Transportation [Music] um and then obviously case management
and goal planning and so that's kind of in a nutshell what we do but obviously
serving all throughout DFW it looks different for every single client that we serve and so yeah anyone who's female
a survivor of sex trafficking so not sexual exploitation specifically sex trafficking because we're a really small
team and so we have to be really focused on who we serve um and then yeah anywhere in the DFW area and there's a
couple of various ways to connect with us we have our crisis hotline that operates Monday through Friday nine to
five that you can call um and then I'll also shoot Felicia an email with our referral form our get
help form and our Empower program application form and she can get that out to you guys which is another way to
get connected with us so yeah that's pretty much it in the nutshell obviously
there's way more that comes along with that but again we'll be outside to connect with after if you have questions
about how you can utilize us or how we should utilize you so thanks
foreign
yeah so make sure to stop by that table before you leave today and get some more information there
so we will go ahead and uh if there are any other agency announcements now is
the time you can come to the front and share do we have any agency announcements yes
morning everyone my name is Wes I'm a pastor at Christ Chapel and I want to
let you all know about a conference that we have coming up this Saturday about fostering it's called fostering the
family we're bringing in Jamie Finn who's a known author and podcast host adopted mom foster mom she's going to be
facilitating our conference this Saturday it's at our Fort Worth Campus from 9am to 2 p.m and I'll include
registration information that follow-up email from Felicia or you can visit our event page at
ccbcfamily.org backslash events to sign up for that just want to let you all know about that
thank you big good morning first of all I want to
say thank you to all of you for what you do uh because it's amazing it's amazing how many people fit in the dream I am uh
George Whitmire I am the new North Texas North Texas regional advisor for the
office of the governor's child sex trafficking things so you may have new Tommy Grover she will send this session
until about this time last year I came in in July in back building I'm just now
getting on board and going out and meeting people so if I haven't met you please meet me today before I before you
leave uh because if you protect and recognize recover support healing or
bring Justice to victims and survivors will help us lock up those perpetrators
of child sex trafficking then we should be knowing each other and we should be working with each other so please stop
by and see me and see how we can help you from the governor's office thank you
foreign everyone my name is Ty Bowden I'm the associate director at the net and we
also have a conference coming up at the end of June June 24th we are hosting an uh Online safety porn and parenting
conference um at Watermark Church on the west side of Fort Worth so we're bringing in some
great speakers to equip uh people with practical tools on how to navigate our hypersexualized culture especially with
online and how that relates to trafficking so you can go to the Nets website and I'll send a link to Felicia as well but the net fw.com Summit will
have all the sign up info there thanks
all right do we have any other agency announcements okay then we will go into our law
enforcement updates we'll start with Fort Worth PD and detective Matthews
audio hello it's that time of year School's Out summertime
um I bring that up because uh summer time's a time when all the kids are out of school and now they're either home alone
or they have more time on their hands to be victimized
um because that brings me to our cases uh we've only had about five or six cases come in the office and about four
tips but guess what one of the common denominators is between all the tips and
cases uh they involve juveniles um so with that it's either something to
do with meeting somebody online or um
some kind of Transportation like using Ubers or lifts so uh these are all cases we're still
looking into gathering information on building evidence and trying to identify suspects because
a lot of these are Anonymous people either they're online or Anonymous people who are ordering the Ubers
for the juveniles so I'm mentioning this so if you all have any friends or know of anybody you
know who have children or around the uh Teenage ages
you know I would just tell them to be extra classes during the summer time monitor their social medias and monitor
their activities uh the best I can uh
so but along with that uh got some good news what we're doing we've been
partnering with some uh other emergency response agencies like the fire departments
um we're also seeing uh they're seeing things out in the field that we don't see or other people don't
see so we've been doing some training with them especially Fort Worth fire
department and we've been getting some calls and tips from them um like they go to a house or something
they see something suspicious they're calling us and letting us know directly we haven't had any cases developed out
of that yet but uh it's very good information and Intel for us so that we
know what's going on out there so that's been really great and really helpful I
think that's about it so appreciate it
thank you and next we'll move to the Tarrant County Sheriff's Office and detective Clark
good morning um during the month of May Tarrant County Human Trafficking unit partnered
with Arlington PD and Fort Worth PD who hosted a multi-agency operation out of their City
um during the May 9th through 11th Arlington PD human exploitation and trafficking unit hosted a three-day
Outreach operation in which detectives were contacted subjects and activist sex ads and attempt to identify victims of
sex trafficking during the operation there were 32 adult subjects that were contacted and believed to be possible
sex trafficking victims 24 of the 32 females accepted to receive resources
from Unbound now five males and females um Bob Mel and our female subjects were
observed dropping off the female victims at the hotel five subjects were detained and arrested for a variety of offenses
there were also four additional cases that were generated by APD to investigate human trafficking two of
which generated um traffic Community persons under the age of 18. May 17th through May 19th or Fort Worth
PDI cap unit held a three-day online solicitation of a minor operation the operation led to seven unknown rests or
seven known arrests and individuals who were communicating online and or by phone in a sexual explicit Banner with
whom they believed were minors um throughout the month of May Tarrant County has received multiple sober tips
during his investigation or during our icac investigator this investigation
um he identified several subjects that are downloading child sexual abuse material also known as child pornography
online on one of those cases the most subject downloaded over 80 000 bottles of what is believed to BC sounds this
case is still actively being investigated and that's all the information
all right I am excited to introduce our speaker today
um if you haven't met him already you should take a moment to meet him he's amazing
um HSI special agent coaching began his career in 1997 with the U.S border
Patrol in Brownsville Texas in 2009 he transferred over to Homeland Security
investigations in Baltimore Maryland and was assigned to the violent crime gang investigations unit where he first
encountered what is known as human trafficking in 2015 he was transferred to Dallas
Texas where he was assigned to the human trafficking unit until 2021. special agent Cochin has successfully
investigated and prosecuted numerous large-scale human trafficking organizations in both the northern
District of Texas and various state and local jurisdictions throughout the United States
social agent coaching is currently assigned to the HSI Dallas gangs and violent crimes task force where he
continues to investigate criminal organizations that continue to traffic adult and female victims for the purpose
of commercial sex to date he has arrested prosecuted and convicted more than a hundred human
traffickers many of which received life sentences for their horrific crimes
let me introduce special agent coach
hi good morning um it's been a minute since I've done these presentations like things I've
used to do them all the time and I see a lot of familiar faces out there that's awesome but more importantly I see a lot
of new faces which is absolutely incredible because it tells me that more people are getting involved in this
fight can everyone hear me if I'm speaking allergies are kind of kicking my butt right now so
I started in 2009 with the Department of Homeland Security back then it was just
called ice and I was immediately assigned to the gang unit up in Baltimore Maryland
and that's kind of where I first ran into trafficking I had no idea what it was before I got that position
and it was kind of shocking it's a lot different up in Maryland than
what is what you typically see down here and I'll explain up in Maryland there's a very large
undocumented immigrant uh community spread primarily through PG County and
Montgomery County and they used to bring these victims up
from the border and they would end up in that area and we would encounter them in
various brothels where they would rent like an apartment they would put these victims in these
apartments they would set up a system where
clientele would come to the apartments engage in commercial sex acts with them and then go on their way it was really a
tough nut to crack because they primarily well I won't say primarily they'll exclusively cater to the
Hispanic population it was a very close song like it were
a white guy that walked up to the door he would immediately be turned away if you were black you would immediately be
turned away if you were any race other than Hispanic it would be immediately turned on
so we had a really hard time cracking those cases it did happen on
occasion we were able to utilize some UC officers and we did rescue quite a few victims up
there and that's we'll get into the challenges that we Face later but then when I came down here I was
immediately put into the trafficking unit and that was kind of my first real exposure to what what we typically
see in this area I was in the trafficking unit from 2015 until 2020 when I guess they decided
okay he needs to go try something else for his own sanity and they moved me over to narcotics I spent about two
years there and then I was moved back to violent crime and I'm kind of
easing my way back into some trafficking cases I right now I have three that are
on and going it looks like I'm gonna pick up two more um and we'll see how those go
when I got here in 2015 I immediately partnered with the only
detective with Fort Worth PD who was working trafficking at the time this channel labrados
Milanos and it was kind of a shock
traffic came back then was like this great unknown
the people here didn't know what it was the prosecutors were very vague on it
they were kind of reluctant to go after the cases channel was completely overwhelmed he
had numerous open cases and it seemed like we couldn't get anywhere on
so we began to focus on the primary group that we saw that was creating most of the problems in this
area it was a group of about 13 gang members that called themselves the Hollywood
groups they operated over in the Polytechnic Heights area Fort Worth
we had it started over a 16 year old girl whose mom kind of tracked her
wherever she went by her phone and knew that she was in a situation where this girl needed help we
were able to interview the girl she identified two of the traffickers we identified
additional victims and co-conspirators and we just threw this case to the point where at the end of the day we had 13
primary targets that we all charged we charged all of them with child sex trafficking and sex
trafficking through forced fraud origin that was kind of the Tipping Point for
sex trafficking pretty much throughout the north Texas area
in that case we prosecuted all of them they were all convicted two of The
Bottom Girls ended up just Bleeding Out seeing racketeering got five years probation
but everybody else really got hammered on the sentences that kind of caught the attention of the
entire State especially the governor's office and it kind of spurred it wasn't the only big travel case when it was
probably the main large-scale trafficking case in this area where it spurred them to create
the organization where they developed this MDT system that all you guys are
using now we went down to Austin and we met with all of the governor's representatives and teams from at Waco
and Houston and El Paso throughout the state and they all came up with this MDT system that's now being used
from there we continued looking through especially
the Fort Worth area that's the primary area that I was concentrating on
those guys that we had prosecuted came in and started talking and they were identifying additional pimps in the area
we were identifying additional victims and we realized Fort Worth Tarrant County Dallas this
entire North Texas area had a horrible problem of sex trafficking with both adults
and minor victims so then we started having more cases
accepted more people started paying attention more ngos were popping up and getting involved in the fight
the word was getting out and that hey there there is this huge problem so we had identified some of the
problems and issues with sex trafficking investigations and there are tremendous anybody who investigates these cases or
assists knows like one of the primary issues the victims themselves right
these victims when we encounter them whether it be in a hotel or after some
call for a domestic violence they are very rarely Cooperative right
off the bat very rarely will they tell you the truth I mean it's the first time they're
meeting you they don't trust you they've been taught not to trust you that you are the enemy that they're going to be
the ones that get in trouble that you're destroying their life their system of support
so they destroy their credibility right off the bat which means that you have to then go and
rebuild that credibility in the course of your investigation so you have to take their story
you have to go get the hotel records the phone records the travel GPS stuff you
know the cash nowadays cash app and will follow venmo and Zell those records are
huge in these cases now because it shows very rarely are they paying cash now
because if they don't have cash on them they don't get robbed so now they're using these quick money transfer systems
so you have to go get all of these records to build up that story
back from 2015 through 2017
some of those records were pretty easy like I could go to a hotel and I could say hey I need room receipts in the name
of this guy or these people and they would just Fork over that information
fast forward to now when I'm trying to get back into it everybody wants paperwork they want a subpoena they want
to search more they want some kind of court order mandating them to turn over these
records so it's not as easy as it was it's one challenge that I'm seeing has changed for the worse
cash app and all of those companies they're pretty responsive for the most part if you bug them and you stay on top
of it but if you don't they just kind of push it to the side and it won't get back to you
back then it was a much easier because everybody was on back page right these
girls would have accounts and you could send a subpoena for one ad and you would get all the information of every account
that they could relate to these people well I'm not saying it's a bad thing but
back a few years ago in like 2017 we went after Backpage and they were
prosecuted and they were convicted and Backpage was taken down so it was
like a great Victory and it was because Backpage was kind of playing both sides at the
time Backpage would give you all this information but then they would turn around and tell the pimp hey the feds are looking at it
or hey you might want to change this wording in your ad because it's going to pick up that this is a kid and then the
cops are going to look at you and they're going to come after you it's kind of a double-edged sword personally I'm glad they're gone it made
my job a little more difficult because now instead of one website it's like 100
Zone it's like a new one pops up every other day so that's another challenge that we run into
we kind of one of the other challenges that we run into now we kind of I don't want to say screwed
ourselves but we kind of screwed ourselves on that big case because we built a very strong case
against these guys most of them turned around and pled guilty
and they still got him they still got 30 years in prison fed time even if they
pled guilty 30 years is a long time so
now most of these guys when we arrest them they see because they talk throughout
jail they know who's gotten what you know well if I plead guilty I'm still
going to get 30 years in prison I might as well just take my chances in a trial and it's hard to convince somebody that
30 years is different from life right to them 30 years is life so now
everybody wants to go to trial on these cases which is a huge demand especially
in the federal system because you have to line up all of your victims you have to have all the discoveries spread out
you have to work with the defense and the prosecutors and if you've never seen like a prosecutor getting ready for
trial it's like they constantly run around with their hair on fire everything has to be perfect and when
they call you have to drop whatever it is you're doing and you got to go get them what they need and God help you if
you don't or they're going to lose it on you so then we kind of run into that where
you you only have so many hours in a day so you become so focused on preparing for trials that you can't really go out
and do these investigations alone so we become quickly overwhelmed
and you still have the lack of Manpower I think in the trafficking group right now with HSI I believe there are
six or seven agents that do it full-time right six or sevenish
when you figure out how many victims I mean you can just go online to any of these websites see how many girls are
posting in Dallas alone I mean it's you just can't there's you
can't get to all there's literally thousands of ads every day that just keep getting cycled it works its way
down the chain people post on top that person just bumps it back up to the top so we're just overwhelmed with work
I think Tarrant County how many you all have now like a handful of investigators same
deal Fort Worth has two detectives and two officers
how many ads are being posted in Fort Worth right now you know it's just overwhelming
one of the biggest challenges that I ran into back in 2015 was when we recovered
these kids and these girls it's like what are we going to do with them now and I love seeing all of these faces
because I know most of you all are not law enforcement that you guys are a lot of ngos a lot of people that are getting
involved in putting these huge organizations up that are specifically focused on helping these victims once we
do find them and recover that didn't exist back then I mean we
hired Cyril in like three years after I had started doing this and I was trying to do saralyn's job in my job and it
just wasn't happening I was losing track of these kids left and right I couldn't do it
so I will say that is one of the advancements that we have made the
system that now addresses sex trafficking is just miles ahead of what we had back
then and that is so heartening to see it really is it almost makes me want to cry
but I won't I see some of the accomplishments
once we prosecuted that case all those guys anytime they get convicted and they plead guilty and they're looking at all
that time in prison the first thing they want to do is tell you about the next guy so that case led to us Prosecuting
another seven that were involved in trafficking those guys in the first case were
extremely violent that's why they got those horrifically long uh sentences the next case that
they talked about those guys were even a little bit worse those guys two of them ended up getting
life two more ended up pleading and getting 20 and 27 years in federal
prison so they come in and they just it just keeps snowballing right so they tell us and we encounter cases
that involve people from Louisiana who ended up Prosecuting those guys that was
another 11 it was Demarcus Davis uh control Davis Pierre lagrond
and a bunch of other Herman Sanders and all those guys that kind of again
worked for our favor because those guys went to trial thinking that they could get out of the 30 years and every single
one of them received multiple life sentences they got three or four years three life three or four life sentences
for each victim that they were charged so I say that in that this entire fight
against human trafficking seems to be a trade-off you trade good for bad
yes we are overwhelmed but yes we are getting good results yes we are struggling to get records but
once we have them we're getting convictions in court you know the county is now Prosecuting
cases back when I was doing it again not to fall the County DA's office in any
way they didn't nobody knew what trafficking was around they would take this case and they're like what are we going to do with this
thing we have a case where our victim is totally uncooperative that came out and
destroyed our entire credibility she lied to the police and said that the guy that we've now tried to charge with
trafficking her was her boyfriend that they were doing this together and she
was doing it willingly and now how am I going to put this kid up on the stand and have her tell say
like she was trafficked and the defense is just going to rip her to pieces so I think they've figured out in the
prosecutor's office especially in the federal system that these victims they
they are what they are right they're there are people that
make for whatever you call it bad decisions or whatever they end up in these situations but that doesn't make
it okay to do what these people do to them just because you make a bad decision doesn't mean somebody gets to
own you and sell you for sex and make money off of you and beat you while you're doing it
so I think we've made a lot of progress in how these cases are prosecuted
it's definitely more streamlined and less chaotic
um the systems are there for the support for the victims and all that
I think that we are I don't want to say we're winning the fight
I think that the tide has turned on it because from 2015 until about 2020
human trafficking in the news and just in law enforcement in in politics in
general was huge a lot of people were talking about it things were being created the systems
were being put in place to fight it lately it's kind of drifting out of
being the center of attention for whatever reason politics or what have you but the problem is not going away
if anything now it's starting to get worse um
again not to get into like political discussions or anything like that but prices of everything is getting are
getting more expensive the cost of living is getting more expensive people who were already
struggling to survive or running out of options on how to get money and survive they're pushing a lot of these people
into more desperate type situations and we're starting to see a little bit
of an uptick in sex trafficking in general
um I will continue to be involved in it I'm not in the sex trafficking group
with HSI anymore I've just moved over to violent crime which is kind of a good thing because we
know sex trafficking doesn't involve violence right so you can't go look at it
so I can kind of do it at my own pace I tend to focus more on the organizations
as opposed to the one pimp one girl or one pimp three or four girls I go after
the guys that are working together and that's one thing that I have seen now
this has used to have pimps that would stay pretty much in the DFW area or they
might work throughout the state of Texas they would run kind of like a track from Fort Worth to Houston and they'd go
down into like Corpus then across over to Austin and then out to the oil fields and back
that's not the way these guys operate anymore these guys are literally going everywhere I mean I have cases now where
we're recovering girls in New York that over the weekend as a matter of fact we just found an adult up in New York that
is being trafficked by a beer in Fort Worth we have cases where they're putting
these girls on planes and sending them to wherever and these girls are just wiring the
money back because it's all being sent by cash app and venmo and so they literally the pimp just signs in takes
the money these girls are out in Vegas The Pimps in Dallas living his life up while
they're out there being beaten and whatever so it makes the investigation a lot
harder because now you have to work with all these jurisdictions that are spread throughout the state are spread
throughout the United States and the rules for records are not the same
in Nevada as they are for Texas and they're certainly not the same in New York as
they are for Texas I mean New York try getting records from New York I mean it's like pulling teeth
they don't want to give you anything you talk to NYPD good people because I used to live up there but they are very guarded about
what information they give out especially if you're not in their office asking for it right they're like how do
I know who you are what are you going to do with it so it's becoming more and more
challenging but it's also becoming more rewarding I'm getting more and more
phone calls of kids that I recovered you know six or seven years ago
that now they're graduating nursing school one graduated medical school another
girl got married just had her first kid you get those calls so that counts as a
success as well so all in all I think it is a a giant
trade-off of the hard work and the challenges with the payoffs in the end
I would like to say that although I do not work for the north Texas trafficking task force which is the federal side of
it that HSI is the lead of they are there as a resource for anybody that needs them
their group supervisor uh guy his name's John Perez he's a very good guy very
caring he's very involved in the fight he's got several very solid agents that work with
him anything that you guys need just give them a call I can put his number out to anybody that
needs it and just lastly thank you again love all the new people here I love
seeing more and more people involved in the fight because God knows we need the help
does anybody have any questions like I said I haven't done this in a while so I know that's kind of choppy but if you
have questions feel free to ask if I'm not shy about answering good bad ugly
okay
all right thank you so much um he's a great resource so if you don't
know him take a minute to introduce yourself and and get to know him and his team and
um thank you everybody for being here today we're ending a little early so take this time to network with each
other uh make some connections and I will see you all next month thank you