Local DPS Investigators Redefine Prostitution

Dark alleys, cheap motels, latex and a wad of soiled dollars: fantasy or fiction, the word ‘prostitution’ evokes a landscape of dingy imagery, ranging from fat and balding johns to meth-addicted women, gold-toothed pimps and physical and emotional violence. Juxtapose the term ‘human trafficking’ and you get children in trunks, duct tape, and abusive, money-hungry men barking orders in a foreign tongue.

For years, cases of prostitution and human trafficking have been deemed and handled as loosely-related threads of a larger sex-crime fabric, but in Tom Green and 29 other Texas counties, Captain Brian Baxter and his team of detectives at the Texas Department of Public Safety’s (TXDPS) Criminal Investigations Division (CID) have been working to change those well-set perceptions and usher in a new definition.

“In my opinion, every woman that is being prostituted is a victim of human trafficking. It’s slavery and they can’t leave, even if they want to,” Baxter stated recently. “Prostitution is one piece, one crime, one way to exploit women and people in human trafficking, it’s not the whole focus.”

In order to understand what trafficking is, Baxter explains what it is not, reaching back to the stand-by imagery of car trunks and duct tape.

“Human trafficking is an exploitation issue,” he explained. “Human smuggling is a transportation issue. Some trafficking victims are smuggled before they’re trafficked. But there’s a bright line difference between smuggled and trafficked.

“I liken it to cocaine,” he continued. “You smuggle cocaine into the country and somebody stands there and sells it to other people. You smuggle someone into the country [and] that’s one crime. What I’m trying to focus on is the trafficking: they’re selling this girl to 10, 12 men a night and it’s a renewable resource. You can sell an ounce of cocaine one time and then you’ve got to go and find more cocaine. If you get your hands on a girl that you recruit, trap, and season, you can sell her over and over again, so that’s why it’s such a big deal.”

Sex trafficking is reported to be the second-largest and second-fastest growing criminal enterprise worldwide, Baxter said, citing sources from Shared Hope International and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) as example. The attraction, he said, is that humans are a renewable resource and that the likelihood of getting caught is smaller as compared to the number-one ranking drug industry.

“If I can drive down the road with a kilo of heroin on the seat and the cops stop me, I’m caught, I’m going to go to jail,” he said. “But if I’m driving down the road with a 15-year-old girl in the seat next to me, I’m not caught. She’s got her cover story worked out, I’ve got my cover story worked out, we’re going to say the right things, they’re going to leave us alone, we’re going to get away with it. That’s why it’s growing so quickly and it’s become a big deal in gangs.”

What is Trafficking?

Under Texas state law, a wide variety of crimes constitute sex trafficking, ranging from the room full of imprisoned young girls to sharing or selling child porn. While the victim may be a single adult or child, the trafficker is guilty of exploiting that person or persons to others in order to turn a profit, be it monetary or for assets.

“If you are using a child to make child pornography in movies that you’re sharing with other people, you are victimizing that child, you’re trafficking that child,” Baxter explained. “In other words exploiting that child to make these movies. That fits into the state trafficking of a person statute that way.  So does prostitution, if you are selling this child for sex acts with other people that’s human trafficking. There’s a lot of different ways to do it.”

Both the trafficker and the individuals purchasing or using the trafficked individual can be charged with human trafficking, Baxter explained, and part of the DPS’ approach to investigating these types of crimes is to reduce the demand by placing all of those involved behind bars.

“These crooks are in it to make money,” he said. “They’re not in it to have sex, they’re not in it for anything, they’re in it to make money. I think demand reduction is very important. In the example of forced prostitution, even a 21-year-old girl is being coerced or forced to be prostituted and if we can show that she’s being trafficked by somebody, every john that pays for sex with her can be prosecuted and convicted of human trafficking, so that’s a second-degree felony. And if the girl is under 18, you’re getting a first-degree felony. You’re going 5-99 or life for buying sex. I think people who are contemplating buying sex need to know that. When you go on backpage.com and they ‘Oooh she looks pretty. I’m going to call her,’ and they work out a deal for her to come to San Angelo, you can go to jail for the rest of your life.”

In the state of Texas, purchasing a prostitute is Class B Misdemeanor. Previous efforts have focused on busting johns, prostitutes and pimps individually, Baxter said, but that focus is changing to reflect the greater problem of human sex trafficking and the need to rescue victims while holding both their captors and facilitators accountable.

Training and Demand Reduction

Houston is the human trafficking capital of Texas, Baxter supposes, and while the problem exists on a local level, San Angelo and other small west Texas communities have an advantage that allows them to get ahead of the curve.

“It’s happening here, but not on the level that it’s happening in the larger cities where it’s able to just become part of the fabric of the underworld,” he said. “Now it’s a buzzword and now people are interested in prosecuting it, whereas before ‘he’s just a pimp,’ you know, ‘she’s just a hooker’. Now, we’re looking at it differently. In so many bigger cities they’re behind the curve and having to play catch-up. Here, I think we’re in a position to get ahead of it.”

Part of getting ahead of the problem is changing the vernacular, Baxter said. Pimps are traffickers and prostitutes, aside from those who willingly do the work, are slaves. When law enforcement and other agencies zoom out and begin looking at the problem from a wider standpoint, they can begin refocusing their efforts on the roots of the cause.

For the past six years, law enforcement agencies have been training their officers in recognition techniques in order to promote awareness and aid in the recovery of victims, via the Interdiction for the Protection of Children program (IPC).

The program is targeted at patrol officers and offers information on different tattoos, vehicle stickers, behaviors and other things that pedophiles and traffickers exhibit to identify themselves among others of their kind. In addition to IPC, a reporting program was developed that enables officers to report recoveries, identifications or suspicions of endangered adults and children, Baxter said.

Using the IPC program and reporting system, 39 children were rescued statewide in 2013. By mid-June 2014, that number was up to 23. “We’re on target to rescue more children than we did last year,” Baxter said, noting that he believes the increase is attributable to training and awareness rather than an increase in human trafficking crimes. As awareness grows, he said, Baxter expects the number to continue to grow.

“Every one of us who have been to this class—every policeman that goes to this class—thinks ‘I remember a stop back in 1996 that was just like that and I didn’t do anything.’ So many of us think back on red flags that popped up that we didn’t recognize because everybody is looking for drugs, stolen cars, fugitives, you know that kind of stuff, never were we really trained to focus on looking for missing and exploited children. But now we are.”

Investigative Methods and the World Wide Web

Since the IPC program has been in place, some 12 criminal investigations have been launched statewide, Baxter said, all started after a patrol officer caught some red flags. While he wasn’t willing to comment on the number of cases he currently has open in Tom Green and the other 29 counties in his district, Baxter said he couldn’t think of a single one that did not involve the internet.  

“[The internet] is huge,” he said, reflecting on his cases. “It’s huge not just for the trafficking portion, but for the recruiting portion. All one has to do is smooth talk the victim over Facebook or whatever social media they’re using. ‘Hey, send me a picture of this’ and then once you send that picture, ‘Oh, I’m going to tell your mom that you sent this picture unless you do this’ and then it goes from there. It’s the same thing happening in person, but it’s happening online.”

Trafficking is a psychological crime, Baxter explained, which revolves around oppression and gradually tightening control until the victim feels they have no way out. It may start with a photo and eventually lead to sex, and before long, the victim may begin recruiting others for the same trafficker.

With the advent of social media and the internet, solicitation and trafficking has become increasingly easy to execute, and much of the initial work is done online. Traffickers use social media to engage the subject, ask for pictures, post them on backpage.com or craigslist and attach a phone number. Johns order online and girls may travel from as far away as Abilene, Midland or Austin to meet.

Due to this problem, the DPS uses online enticement to catch predators, and Baxter said their efforts have always provided resounding results. “We have an undercover agent posing as a 14-year-old girl and people come out of the woodwork to have sex with a 14-year-old girl,” he said. “Usually we’ll get five or so and then we’ll turn it off because that’s a lot of people to deal with.”

Baxter said that so far, he’s never implemented an online enticement sting in San Angelo, however several have been done in Midland. “That’s part of our demand reduction approach,” he said. “You’re probably not going to rescue any victims doing an online enticement sting, but you’re going to capture the creeps that are creating a demand for those girls to be exploited. If you go online to have sex with a 14-year-old girl or a 40-year-old girl, there’s a good chance that you’re talking to a police officer.”

Awareness and Help

In order to continue effectively combating the world’s second-largest criminal industry, awareness is key. More and more law enforcement officers (LEO) are being trained in the IPC program and a conference is scheduled for CPS employees in September, however Baxter maintains that forward motion will be a result of trial and error.

“Awareness is just getting to where it needs to be in law enforcement,” he said. “We’re still at the very beginning of raising awareness. We’re nowhere near where we need to be to be really combating human trafficking collectively, as a profession. As long as we’re targeting prostitutes for arrest, we don’t get it. We obviously don’t get it. But I think once we all start looking at it the right way, yes, I think the number of cases is going to go through the roof. I’ve got less than a handful of investigators that do this kind of work combined in these 30 counties, but they also have to do other types of cases. They’re still learning what success looks like.”

By the same token, Baxter stressed that awareness needs to spread beyond law enforcement and into the realm of other professionals and the public, where victims are likely to surface.

“I envision a 15-year-old girl going to the ER with the third STD of the month and the ER nurse [thinking] ‘nasty. This or that’ instead of going ‘why is a 15-year-old coming in here with the third STD for the month?’” he said. “Really looking at them as victims and knowing that even though they may not look like they need help or may not ask for help that we need to help them, especially as professionals.”