Q: What is your office doing to combat child exploitation and human trafficking?
A: Around the end of 2022, we joined the NE Florida Intercept (Inter-agency Child Exploitation and Person Trafficking) Task Force. This is made up of seven Northeast Florida law enforcement agencies including local, state and federal agencies all working together (Homeland Security Investigation, the US Attorney, and Clay, Putnam, Nassau, Duval and St. Johns County sheriff’s offices). At our office, we’ve dedicated a full time detective to the task force to combat childhood exploitation and human trafficking within our region.
This taskforce has partnered with Operation Light Shine, based out of Nashville, Tennessee, in a unique public/private partnership.
Q: Can you give us some background on Operation Light Shine and your office’s partnership with the organization?
A: Operation Light Shine is a non profit organization committed to combat child sexual exploitation in human trafficking. It was started in Nashville by Matt Murphy, a US Army Green Beret combat veteran. He had a very personal reason to start Operation Light Shine as his sister was trafficked for sex and drugs and found deceased in 2019.
Operation Light Shine is the backbone of our NE Florida task force as it provides financial and technical support as well as other resources. Operation Light Shine in turn partners with the Tim Tebow Foundation.
Our task force is the first of its kind in Northeast Florida and only the second to partner with Operation Light Shine.
Q: Do you have any statistics for child exploitation and human trafficking in our area?
A: First, nationally, the cybertip line of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (called “NCMEC”) had 29.3 million reports in 2021 of which 99 percent were suspected child sexual abuse materials.
In Northeast Florida in 2022, there were 2,300 reports combined of child exploitation and human trafficking.
In this same year, 2022, the St. Johns Sheriff’s Office received 200 cybertips from NCMEC and local citizen complaints. After our subject matter experts screened the tips, we ended up with 65 child exploitation and 13 human trafficking reports that we assigned out. Of those, seven child exploitation and five human trafficking cases have been handed over to the state or federal government for prosecution and an additional 13 cases are active with charges forthcoming.
Unfortunately, we are not exempt from the criminal element here in St. Johns County.
Q: What should citizens do if they suspect child exploitation or human trafficking?
A: The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) cybertip line is 1-800-843-5678 or you can report a concern online at report.cybertip.org.
Q: What is the best way for our readers to contact you with any questions or suggestions about this article?
A: They can email me at sheriff@sjso.org or call me at (904) 824-8304. Also, our website, www.sjso.org has a wealth of resources, from alarm registration to Crime Stoppers to our Neighbors app.
