The operation was led by Attorney General Dave Yost and about 100 agencies throughout the state participated. More than 50 “potential human trafficking victims were helped” during the operation, the attorney general said.
Streck said the new local task force was created after the county’s other two task forces, the Miami Valley Bulk Smuggling Task Force and the Regional Agencies Narcotics and Gun Enforcement (RANGE) continued to find prostitution connected to their drug investigations.
He told the Dayton Daily News that the task force will be ‘victim-focused,’ meaning that it will seek to connect victims to social services.
“When you hear prostitution is a victimless crime, you are fooling yourselves,” Streck said during a press conference in Columbus. “You’re telling yourself that so you keep doing it. Very rarely is there an individual who says ‘this is the career path for me.’ Most of the time there is an underlining influence there that has control of them.”
“We now have another tool to help those individuals and once again to put the people who need to be in jail in jail and to help the victims who need help to get out of that lifestyle,” he said.
Streck said that the members of the task force are from his office, the Butler Twp. Police Department, Miami Twp. Police Department and Homeland Security and could expand in the future. He said social services are being provided by the Oasis House.
Along with the arrests, Streck said the local U.S. Marshalls located two “high-risk” missing juveniles. He also said the new task force will be working to stop local child exploitation by arresting those seeking sex with minors.
“Last week was a sting operation and it was statewide,“ Streck said. “This task force will be working day in and day out, whether it’s massage parlors, whether it’s the restaurant industry, sex trafficking is huge, dealing with missing persons and missing juveniles, they have a large role that they are going to play throughout our county and anywhere else they’re needed.”
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