My Testimony to the Missouri Legislature About Child Trafficking

good afternoon i know we’re we’re perilously close to lunch so i’ll make my uh my comments uncharacteristically brief my name is eric garland i’m the executive director of competitive futures which is a consultancy that provides intelligence analysis to governments and corporations around the world given the implications of the recent report of the oig health and human services the report that just came out about governance and foster care i’ll just boil it down here good news and bad news the bad news is that not having governance in place to keep track of kids is good news for one group of people organized crime uh they are principally behind most of the trafficking according to the united nations so when you lose kids out of that system for whatever reason that’s who picks up the slack and it’s a very profitable business , 7 secondsnow the good news is you have the power to help shut that business down those crimes can be prosecuted , 15 secondsand it needs documentation and data from you or rather from the people you are questioning here , 22 secondsum i’ve actually provided a written commentary , 29 secondsuh that goes into this in greater detail that’s the long and the short of it um not having the documentation for , 38 secondswhatever reason there allows these children to go into these systems that might be regional , 47 secondsum might be national or even global um the united nations says that of all trafficking of all persons , 55 secondsthat’s adults and children um 50 of that trafficking is for sexual exploitation , 2 secondsand that can be cash-based services or from the production of child sex abuse media , 9 secondsuh so it’s a pretty big problem and it’s all over the world right now now i’ll just leave you just some good news on where that date is gonna go , 18 secondsputting so much of this stuff online um with whether it’s illicit media or the fact that we’re all carrying devices , 26 secondsthat have gps trackers there is more evidence out there to submit to law enforcement around the world than there has ever been before in , 35 secondsthe history of civilization and many of the worst criminals here organize via these digital devices , 43 secondswhether it’s the sale using cryptocurrency to buy illicit media all from a dark net which is being , 50 secondsvery well observed by international law enforcement or communicating with each other about who they’re trafficking where they’re going and why using , 59 secondshardened and supposedly secure devices that were in fact designed by the fbi there was a couple of networks that were taken down that , 6 secondsway where 13 000 of the top organized crime bosses and lieutenants were all using this thinking that they , 14 secondswere not being heard when in fact every single message they were sending was being sent directly to the fbi that’s in the past several , 22 seconds12 to 24 months that these things have come forth all of that data , 28 secondsleaves an opportunity to identify who’s been victimized identify who did the victimizing and , 36 secondsgive that to relevant prosecutors and put them in prison and rescue the people that need rescuing , 44 secondsthat can only happen when you have pictures of the children that come into the system for the worst of reasons the most heartbreaking of reasons to begin , 53 secondswith and then to be able to provide the picture of them birth dates other identifiers when they leave for whatever reason and get that into the system of international law enforcement national , 7 secondsfederal law enforcement start there with that data and then you can help take down the bad guys so that’s the good news and the future , 16 secondsyou can drive towards i’ll take any questions are there any questions for this witness , 24 secondsreal quick so how did you are you from missouri are you how did you get here to this hearing i’m just curious because i live in saint louis i’m , 33 secondsoriginally from vermont and i worked in washington dc for 12 years where still a lot of my work specialty or , 40 secondsactually organize in doing analysis of of larger trends and society technology economics politics , 48 secondsfor corporate and government clients we look at risk and opportunity and one of the strategic level risks is um , 56 secondsis transnational organized crime which i’ve been tracking for 25 years at different levels but it’s become very intense , 3 secondsin the last five to 10.

so in your professional opinion how does missouri rank i mean as with this oig report uh , 13 secondsour data collection in your professional opinion i think it’s catastrophic i think we are in a crisis mode and i’ve been saying , 21 secondsthis for a long time this is the crossroads of america in all the good ways and all the worst ways um and , 29 secondsorganized crime here has been well known uh since prohibition and before um and , 37 secondsgiven that human trafficking is done by organized crime syndicates um that are increasingly connected to global syndicates it’s a there’s a lot , 46 secondsof subtlety as to who you’re dealing with you can have smaller uh groups that are still organized that that deal with , 52 secondsor um have to answer to a larger syndicate it would depend it gets to be a sophisticated question , 1 secondbut i believe uh federal law enforcement would tell you that missouri is a hot spot of trafficking because of all the , 9 secondsmodalities of transportation and i would think because of the laxity of law enforcement here when you hear that , 18 secondsthey’re just not interested in looking for lost children you know what do they do all day what is their job exactly if lost children , 26 secondsdoesn’t come under their purview for law enforcement that that that provides a very rich , 34 secondsenvironment for organized criminals to take advantage of systems and they the thing about bad guys is they have a long , 42 secondstime to practice and there’s a lot of money in it for them and they get good at thinking about these things okay thank you so much for your testimony thank you , 51 secondsany further witnesses