Jefferson County prosecutors are taking a tougher line on investigating human trafficking cases, which they see as contributing to violent crimes such as robberies and aggravated assaults.
“It is a bigger issue for us and, yes, our number of cases has increased,” Kim Duchamp, special crimes chief at the county’s District Attorney’s Office, told the Texas Business Coalition. “I think more of that is due to that we are actively and proactively looking for these types of cases.”
Such abuse cases often involve the recruitment or coercion of minors into sex trafficking, according to Duchamp. Last week the Beaumont Police Department took into custody two people accused of human tracking, as well as two juveniles who were found with the pair in a local hotel room.
One of those arrested, Darrell Jordan, a 22-year-old Beaumont man, was also charged with felony possession of a firearm. Police were tipped off to one of the missing juvenile’s possible whereabouts from a witness at the Petro Truck Stop.
Strategically located along the Interstate Highway 10 freeway between New Orleans and Houston, Jefferson County has been working with Gov. Greg Abbott’s child sex trafficking team as well as prosecutors in other counties to hold offenders responsible for exploiting other human beings, Duchamp noted.
“Our location in Jefferson County is close to the Louisiana border,” she said. “We do have a lot of traffickers who do cross state lines, who come back and forth from our county to Calcasieu Parish in Louisiana.”
The constant movements of traffickers among multiple jurisdictions doesn’t necessarily make it more difficult for law enforcement to find them, according to Duchamp.
“Most of our traffickers are local, from southeast Texas or even from the Houston area,” she said.
The county District Attorney’s Office has added more personnel to the unit that focuses on sex crimes, and Duchamp said the office has obtained grants from the governor's office that have allowed her to specialize in human trafficking cases for the past four years. Technology that allows officials to track suspicious social media ads is also playing a role.
The focus on these types of cases represents a big shift for law enforcement, which did not focus a lot of resources on the problem in past years, Duchamp said.
“Now we are paying more attention to it,” she said.
The focus of Duchamp's office is to thoroughly investigate human trafficking operations and to hold people responsible for offenses committed, as well as to provide the necessary aid or medical care to underage victims and their families, according to Duchamp.
“We want to make sure they have access to counseling and substance abuse counseling if that’s what they need,” she said.
Working with the state Attorney General’s Office has also been helpful to generate a greater public awareness of the problem and to provide training to those who might come into contact with traffickers, Duchamp said.
“We encourage people who see something suspicious to call and report that,” either to local law enforcement or to the National Human Trafficking Hotline (888-373-7888), she said.
