Dan Nash is a former Missouri state trooper who has spent the majority of his career as an investigator fighting human trafficking. After leaving the Missouri State Police he founded the Human Trafficking Training Center. This week he’s in Dalton teaching at a conference for law enforcement personnel and medical professionals from across the Southeast. The training is designed to teach them how to identify and effectively communicate with possible victims of human trafficking and also how to prosecute offenders. The conference is hosted by the city of Dalton and Hamilton Health Care System.
“Law enforcement does not get human trafficking training in their academy,” Nash told a group of Dalton leaders Wednesday afternoon during a break in the conference. “And people think ‘isn’t that just in small towns?’ No. How much training do you think the FBI gets when it comes to human trafficking? That would be zero. Not one minute. Not our U.S. Border Patrol, not our U.S. marshals, the troopers typically are not trained, the local (police officers) are not trained.”
“Medical professionals are the same way,” Nash continued. “There’s all kinds of research out there that shows that 88% of human trafficking victims utilize the medical system while they’re being trafficked an average of six to eight times. So they’re coming into contact with doctors and nurses but we’re not picking those up in the medical field. The reporting rate for human trafficking in the medical field is 4% nationally. So 88% are rolling through the medical system and we’re only finding 4%, because doctors and nurses are not trained in human trafficking either.”
Nash spoke Wednesday at the Dalton Convention Center during a lunch session to provide an “executive summary” of the conference at the request of Dalton Mayor Annalee Harlan Sams. Members of Dalton’s business and medical community attended, as well as city staff. Nash took the opportunity to dispel some of the myths about human trafficking.
“There’s so much misconception about crime and human trafficking. Most people think that human trafficking is some kid that’s abducted from the Target parking lot. That’s what we see … in some Hollywood movie,” Nash said. “That’s not what trafficking looks like in America. Your kid is not going to get kidnapped from the Target parking lot and trafficked. Traffickers do not do that. If your kid gets kidnapped, 70% of the time (they’re taken by) the non-custodial parent … how traffickers recruit and groom and exploit and manipulate people is mostly online.”
Nash said he wouldn’t let his kids have a smartphone, and that nobody else that he knows who works in the field of human trafficking prevention lets their kids have one either.
“I grew up with ‘stranger danger’ and the guy in the white van,” Nash said. “That’s not what we see anymore. That’s not the danger, the danger is the phone. Now when your kids have a smartphone, you’re letting the man in the white van in your home every single night and he’s talking to your kids.”
Nash explained that traffickers target kids online and then exploit their vulnerabilities to groom and recruit them into being trafficked. Nash said that one of the biggest industries where trafficking victims are found is the illicit massage business industry and he pointed out that there are businesses of that nature nearby. He explained that trafficking victims rarely report that they’re being trafficked, which makes it more difficult for police to intervene. He said once police and other first responders are trained to better understand trafficking and psychological factors involved they can better communicate with victims. That makes a big difference.
“We did 49 trainings last year in 28 states. We trained 4,927 police officers. Those 4,927 police officers left our training and found 272 trafficking victims. The quickest was five hours and 14 minutes and the youngest was 11. It happens immediately as soon as you’re trained,” Nash said.
More than 150 police officers, first responders and medical professionals are taking part in the training conference. Many are from the Dalton area and others are from Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Mississippi. The conference is funded by money the city has received from the National Opioid Settlement.
“It was sobering to hear from the attorney general’s office … that the power to control this and keep our community safe doesn’t come from the federal level, it comes from the local level. The smallest level of government is most effective,” Sams told the gathering. “Getting our kids engaged, making sure we are doing all we can with Parks and Rec(reation) to have as robust a program as possible, is a proven tactic to keep kids form being recruited to gang activities, drugs and all of these things that end up in a very bad place.”
“Last night I said to the mayor ‘If you’re going to solve this problem … it’s going to be the locals and the states, it’s not going to be the federal government,'” Nash said of the importance of training and empowering local personnel. “If you’re waiting on the feds, you’re going to be waiting a long time.”