Indiana police team up for human trafficking awareness

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana groups are touting efforts to put a stop to human trafficking during Human Trafficking Prevention Month.

Organizations and state troopers were pushing to spread awareness. Indiana State Police says, through Friday, troopers will spread awareness about human trafficking through the help of truckers.

Jessica Evans, founder and executive director of Allies Inc., said, “It’s everyone’s responsibility to raise awareness because it only does harm to survivors when we don’t have an accurate picture of what trafficking actually looks like.”

According to the Indiana Trafficking Victims Assistance Program, at least 61 people in Marion County, were recovered in 2023. The majority were young women who were forced or tricked into doing sex work or forced labor.

“There’s mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and so it really impacts their entire being and so recovery moving forward can be extremely complex,” Evans said.

Allies Inc. and other organizations are combatting trafficking and helping survivors get a second chance at life through mentorship. Evans said, “Think about when you’re a teenage girl regardless of what’s happened to you it’s great to have people who are investing in you and see you for who you are.”

Police say truckers play a vital role in preventing human trafficking.

Indiana State Police says it’s working closely with the Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance and Truckers Against Trafficking to hand out information this week to truckers. Kimberly Hill, a motor carrier inspector at Indiana State Police, said that the information “tells them when to call 911, when to call the human trafficking hotline if they’re able to interact with the individual, questions to ask, along with some red flags to look for like a van or an RV,”

State police say truckers are in a unique position to fight human trafficking, and they should follow several signs. “They are the eyes and ears of America. They’re in places that the rest of us are not. They’re spending the night at truck stops or rest areas. which is very often where human trafficking occurs in those locations,” Hill said.

Darlene Bradley-White, a retired U.S. Department of Homeland Security special agent, said, “A lot of people feel like that’s the movie ‘Taken.’ Trafficking happens right in our schools, it happens in our neighborhoods, it happens in our malls. It happens on social media. so that’s something important that we need to look at wholeheartedly all around as a community,”