‘Our entire focus’: Child crimes prevention, trafficking assistance offered to Williamsport Bureau of Police
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The Williamsport Bureau of Police has reached memorandums of understanding with non-profit organizations that will assist them in the training of police investigating human trafficking and offer resources to prevent crimes against children.
Resolutions presented by city Police Chief Justin Snyder were approved recently by the City Council for the Bureau of Police with the Lantern Rescue Foundation and the National Child Protection Task Force.
Former city officer, Clinton Gardner, who was with the department for nine years, described the foundation for council and how it specializes in training police officers in human trafficking.
Today, there are 27 million victims of human trafficking. The foundation is present in 10 countries, including the U.S., and works with governments, law enforcement agencies and the courts to combat human trafficking.
Gardner, who was born and raised in Williamsport, said the foundation officials can be seen at such places as community events and local social service agency happenings.
Among its training are eight-hour-long seminars depicting ways that human traffickers groom their victims and offer various scenarios that police may encounter.
Meanwhile, The National Child Protection Task Force was represented by Teresa Jauregui, its chief operations officer.
Originating in 2019, the task force consists of a collective of full-time employees, a small group, consisting of eight individuals, in addition to a number of volunteers.
"We are a collective of current and former law enforcement, prosecutors and individuals who are in the private sector," she said, adding "our entire focus is to assist law enforcement at no cost when it comes to cases involving missing and exploited youths."
She provided council with background, saying as of 2022 the FBI determined that there were 359,094 missing children in the U.S.
In addition to that the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children, including those who run a cybertip line determined through a series of studies that one in six runaway children are likely victims of child sex trafficking.
The entire organization is dedicated to providing additional resources to law enforcement regarding these very sensitive cases.
Jauregui was a prosecutor for a decade and started in Boston and was a prosecutor in York County where she resides. Her husband is also a police sergeant with the York City Police Department and originally from Williamsport.
The task force will be available as an intelligence organization, able to guide law enforcement officers in how to conduct investigations in a quick and efficient manner.
The task force is able to provide police with information at no additional cost because it has access to various tools that have been donated.
The task force always conducts investigations
within the parameters of any law enforcement investigation.
It will not do anything that could jeopardize any constitutional rights of potential perpetrators or the witnesses or more importantly the children.
"Our focus is to provide quick, actionable intelligence to officers so that they are able to make an effectual arrest," she said.
As an example, the task force provided a series of trainings in New York state. Last year, there was a child who went missing near Buffalo and was found in less than 24 hours in York, Pa., by a man who was grooming her, using her for sexual purposes and introducing her to narcotics.
He is serving a lengthy state prison sentence.
Law enforcement in Buffalo gave feedback stating that, if it wasn't for the training and assistance, that child would not have been found in 24 hours.