Greg's Corner

Twin Cities suburbs fight against human trafficking

Last week, we discussed how January is Human Trafficking Awareness month and how the problem is not just confined to big cities and urban areas. At that time we talked about how the issue was affecting Idaho Falls, Idaho. Not exactly a monolithic metropolis. Now another location in Middle America is taking the fight to the plague of human trafficking and it’s in suburban, Minnesota.

A group called Citizens Against Sex Trafficking, or CAST for short, is working in cooperation with the police of Washington County, Minnesota, which contains communities considered the suburbs of the St. Paul-Minneapolis area. Once again, a citizens group is showing that human trafficking is happening everywhere in our country, including small towns and suburbs.

CAST is already showing results with the rescuing of a 13-year-old girl. And where is CAST finding these victims? Backpage of course. An investigator with Washington County police said that she has reviewed close to a 100,000 ads for trafficking in their county alone last year. This is after Backpage supposedly closed down their adult section, although in reality the trafficking ads just moved to the personals section where paying to have the ads promoted still exists. In essence Backpage, is still making money from ads where woman and children are being trafficked against their will, and as we’ve pointed out, this is happening everywhere probably including where you live.

Until we as a nation start to recognize human trafficking as an ‘everywhere’ problem, Backpage and the traffickers that keep them in business will continue to make what is essentially blood money.