SPOKANE- NCAA tournament events in Spokane will bring crowds into the city, however, experts caution that large sporting events also brings an increase of prostitution and human trafficking.
Organizations like Empower Her Network or World Without Exploitation notice a concerning trend across the country regarding a surge of commercial sex around sporting events such as the Super Bowl or the NCAA tournament.
They say the reason for this is that when large numbers of men with disposable income are concentrated in one place for major sporting events, the demand for sex-buying increases.
“I’ve heard this over and over…the Super Bowl is…one of the biggest days of the year that people are being trafficked… [But] it could be a…tire convention in Akron, Ohio…It’s not always that one big thing. Anywhere large groups of men meet up,” Robin Miller, the Northwest advocate for Empower Her Network, said.
Miller is a survivor of the commercial sex trade and was trafficked in Nevada, Hawaii and Arizona.
She escaped the trade in 1999 and has been working in anti-trafficking advocacy work for over 10 years.
She also co-founded the Sex Trade Survivor Caucus, which focuses on policy and legislation concerning the sex trade.
The Spokane Police Department (SPD) told NonStop Local that it is known amongst law enforcement that there is increased commercial sex activity around large sporting events.
“We do see increased commercial sex activity, that doesn’t always translate into what we would define as human trafficking,” Kelly Smith, the Assistant Special Agent in Charge at FBI Seattle, said.
Smith runs all of the FBI’s criminal investigations for Washington state.
He claims that the increase in commercial sex activity could mean an increase in prostitution over human trafficking.
“From an FBI standpoint, we certainly do see volumes go up. So, anytime you have large crowds, large groups of people…we see all sorts of different crime types go up,” Smith said.
The FBI does have a human trafficking task force with SPD and the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, called the Child Exploitation and Human Trafficking Task Force.
SPD told NonStop Local there will be a large police presence during March Madness games and that they will be well-positioned for any commercial sex-related crime.
