Fulton County leaders of all political stripes agreed on one thing over lunch on Wednesday: Human trafficking must end.
Georgia’s first lady Marty Kemp met inside the Georgia International Convention Center with mayors, law enforcement heads and Fulton Schools’ superintendent Mike Looney to discuss what she called a statewide problem.
“Once you learn about it, in my eyes, you got to do something about it,” she said.
Shortly after entering the Governor’s mansion in 2019, the first lady began a crusade against human trafficking. She formed that Georgians for Refuge, Action, Compassion, and Education (GRACE) Commission.
“Brian and I are determined to end human trafficking in our home state, once and for all,” she wrote in a guest editorial to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that published in January.
But there are issues.
An AJC investigation in 2014 cast doubt on the level of human trafficking in Georgia, with experts saying officials sometimes use perception instead of facts.
The most concrete numbers of Wednesday’s meeting came from Earnelle Winfrey, Fulton’s chief district attorney of Human Trafficking & Child Exploitation: Fulton’s courts currently have 34 open human trafficking cases involving 42 victims, 24 of whom are minors.
“That can’t be all of them,” Winfrey said. “ ... It’s disproportionally not representative.”
South Fulton Police Chief Keith Meadows said he knows why.
“The reason you’re not seeing those cases is we’re not seeing those types of resources provided to police departments,” he said, adding that they need more officers and training.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said her office needs more specialized investigators for human trafficking cases. She also agreed that cops need better approaches — a prostitution charge is not the way to handle someone in crisis, she said.
“I need officers who do not look at these girls in disgust but are rather the victim of a bigger problem,” Willis said.
Credit: Steve Schaefer
Credit: Steve Schaefer
It’s not only the right thing to do, she said, but it would help reduce serious crime: “Human trafficking is now becoming one of the major ways gangs are operating and making money.”
Meadows agreed: “Gangs are finding it more profitable to traffic in human beings than drugs. Why? The penalties aren’t as stiff.”
It’s tough for an airport-adjacent city like College Park, with 15,000 residents and roughly 30 hotel/motels that are popular spots for human trafficking, said College Park’s interim police chief Thomas Kuzniacki.
He said some commanding officers encourage their beat cops to just take reports and get back into service instead of analyzing what’s in front of them. Others are “overwhelmed when they see human trafficking or sexual assault (cases).”
Willis said human trafficking came to the forefront because she suspects that it, along with racism, was a factor in the mass shooting spree that killed eight people at spas around metro Atlanta two months ago. Six of the victims were Asian women.
Willis announced the indictment of 22-year-old Robert Aaron Long, who is white, on Tuesday. She plans to pursue hate crime charges for the first time in Fulton.
The narrative that these women were sex workers has been disputed by multiple family members of the slain women as another example of anti-Asian hate.
Willis told the AJC on Wednesday that she has been touring some of the spas involved, but she has publicly presented no evidence to show human trafficking in them. She said human trafficking investigations will be a top 2022 priority for her.
Willis said Wednesday she would love to see collaboration that resulted in racketeering, or RICO, charges for any human trafficking at spas.
“If those cases got RICO – and you got a DA that don’t mind – the forfeiture could pay back what you put into it,” she said.
The state’s human trafficking hotline is 1-866-ENDHTGA (1-866-363-4842).
Credit: WSBTV Videos
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