Upcoming Seattle World Cup matches will bring increased focus on human trafficking

Six upcoming World Cup matches in Seattle are expected to boost Washington’s economy. However, law enforcement officials worry the influx of visitors could also increase demand for human trafficking.

During a multi-agency briefing on Wednesday, city and state officials outlined their preparations to combat human trafficking during the upcoming tournament and shared resources on how to identify and help victims of trafficking.

“Human trafficking is happening in Washington state. It’s happening in every community; rural, suburban, urban, you name it, people are being trafficked and exploited, whether we recognize it or not,” Christy Salzman, an assistant state Attorney General, said Wednesday. “The flipside to that is that when we have an event like FIFA, we have lots of people coming into town, there could be an increase in demand for trafficking, but that does not mean that it is creating trafficking that was not already there before.”

Washington State Patrol Lt. Dan McDonald said while much of the work to combat trafficking the agency does is covert, the state patrol is “very involved” in investigating human trafficking, child exploitation, and missing and unidentified people.

“As far as the human trafficking around FIFA, we are very active,” McDonald said. “We do a lot of undercover work, so I can’t really talk about the work that we’re doing.”

With five staff members dedicated to investigations, McDonald said the WSP relies on partnerships with agencies across the state to combat human trafficking.

“Even though I can’t talk about exactly what we’re doing, just be assured that we are very active, and we will be out enforcing human trafficking laws and recovering victims of human trafficking,” McDonald said.

Among the signs city and state officials say people should look for are youth who inexplicably have excess amounts of cash, multiple room keys, multiple cellphones, false identities, proactive clothing, or sex paraphernalia, or a lack of knowledge of their community or whereabouts. Although signs could have valid explanations, they could suggest someone is a victim or may need assistance.

Each game in Seattle will be played in front of more than 62,500 people inside the stadium, with tens of thousands more watching parties and events throughout the city. With so many people crowded inside the city, Sgt. Joshua Dunbar said each site in the city will have “dedicated police resources” and a “large amount of city resources” to ensure the events remain safe.

Seattle Police Sgt. Shawn Martinell, who supervises the department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said Wednesday they have prepared for almost a year for an “anticipated uptick in human trafficking” during the World Cup.

“We have several operations planned,” Martinell said. “Multi-faceted; we will be looking at contacting the victims on the streets. We will be looking at doing operations to interrupt human trafficking and hold the traffickers and the buyers accountable.”

Last year, the Seattle World Cup organizing committee launched an initiative to raise awareness around human trafficking and increase training for frontline workers to identify signs of trafficking. The organization offered training for up to 2,500 workers.

While the World Cup will bring an increased security presence to the city, it’s not clear whether it will lead to a direct increase in trafficking or simply to increased enforcement. A review of 55 scholarly articles examining the connection between major sporting events like the World Cup and the Super Bowl and sex trafficking published by the Anti-Trafficking Review found little empirical evidence that the events bring increased risk for trafficking.

Officials said Wednesday that while large sporting events don’t create human trafficking, they do increase awareness of an existing issue in communities.

“There’s a lot of media about how FIFA and large sporting events create human trafficking. What we know is that they don’t create human trafficking,” Salzman said. “They amplify a problem that is already existing in our communities.”