The Fight To End Sex Trafficking

00:04
Brent Hinson
Between the lines with Virtual Academy. We all have a story to tell. Hello, and welcome to another edition of between the Lines with Virtual Academy. We’re a podcast going beyond the bads to allow members of law enforcement, public safety and first response a place to tell their stories and also talk about the cases that have impacted their lives. I am your co host, Brent Hinson. This episode may be eye opening and quite honestly, a little shocking to those listening who aren’t in law enforcement because we’re going to be talking about an uncomfortable topic today that being sex trafficking, human trafficking. But for those like our guest who have spent their careers fighting against it, they know it’s a growing problem in all of our communities. And without awareness and action, it’s something that’s going to continue to damage countless lives. For Mike Warren, you know, there are certain episodes that we do here on this podcast, like when we talked with James Isaacs and his dedication towards fighting crimes against children.

01:11
Brent Hinson
Or Max Schachter being an advocate for school safety after losing his son in the parkland shooting. That, you know, despite being very difficult to talk about, there’s some of the most important episodes we do because it allows us to shine lights on topics that need a certain amount of time and attention.

01:33
Michael Warren
It’s interesting that you go to leadership classes and one of the topics that they always talk about is the need to have difficult conversations. And they’re called difficult conversations for a reason because they’re difficult and they’re not fun, but that doesn’t take away from their importance.

01:50
Brent Hinson
Yeah, I think sometimes we think, well, if I don’t acknowledge it doesn’t exist. And I think we have to get.

01:56
Michael Warren
Out of that mindset, ignoring the problem. It works sometimes, unfortunately. And when it works, people start saying, well, it worked this time, then it’s going to work for this solution. And that’s the way we’re wired as human beings, you think about an officer in a use of force situation. If they’ve been in a situation before and the taser has worked, then that’s probably the weapon that they’re going to use in that use of force. But when it doesn’t work in this particular one, they often struggle to make that transition because it’s something new to consider. And I think that people really have a hard time considering this problem because it is so devastating. It’s devastating widespread. Yes. And that’s the part I think that is probably we’re going to find out today. We know it’s devastating and we can kind of imagine how harmful it is to the victims, but I don’t think we understand how prevalent it is in society at all levels.

02:53
Brent Hinson
Or they say it’s just in the big cities.

02:55
Michael Warren
Yeah, it’s not around it’s just in the big cities. It’s just around big sporting events, special events. It’s like Christmas. It pops up, there’s a big deal, but then it goes away and that’s not the case.

03:06
Brent Hinson
Yeah, not at all. And I think our guests today will definitely shed some insight onto this whole topic, and I’m looking forward to the discussion, and hopefully we can inform a lot of people that are listening.

03:17
Michael Warren
If one person listens and they have that difficult conversation with their kid, then it was worth recording today. So why don’t you go ahead and tell us about our guest and let’s bring her on and get the difficult conversation going.

03:30
Brent Hinson
Well, our guest today is a retired law enforcement professional serving with the Phoenix Police Department for over 25 years. 13 of those years, she was a detective in the Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit, where she worked undercover identifying and rescuing juveniles and adults who were victims of sex trafficking. She continues her efforts to educate and raise awareness about sex trafficking by teaching those in law enforcement and the public at large how to conduct proactive undercover operations targeting sex buyers and traffickers. And in 2019, she was among those featured in a Frontline PBS documentary called Sex Trafficking in America. We’ll actually put a link to that in the show notes. It is with great pleasure that we get to welcome detective Heidi Chance to between the Lines. Thank you so much for getting this scheduled. I know we’ve been going back on time zone issues, but we made it work, and I’m so glad that were able to have you on today.

04:28
Heidi Chase
Thank you. Thank you so much, Heidi.

04:31
Michael Warren
I ask most of the people that come on our podcast the same basic questions at first because I think it’s important to understand where we started. So how was it that you came to get involved in law enforcement at the beginning?

04:43
Heidi Chase
So I am actually a daughter of a law enforcement officer. My dad retired in 1999 when I graduated the academy, and he actually asked the chief to have his badge issued to me.

04:57
Michael Warren
That’s awesome.

04:58
Heidi Chase
Super special.

04:59
Michael Warren
That is awesome. Now, did your dad work in Arizona then, I assume?

05:03
Heidi Chase
Yeah. So he did 26 years with Phoenix Police Department.

05:06
Michael Warren
26 a magic number, it seems like.

05:08
Heidi Chase
Yeah. And then also his father did I’m not even sure how many years. Definitely 20. At least in New York, NYPD.

05:19
Michael Warren
I’ve got to ask this. I spend a lot of time in Arizona, and I have several friends that live out there, and one of the things that they’ve told me is that very few people are actually from Arizona. Now, are you from Arizona or did you start life in New York?

05:32
Heidi Chase
No, I am from Arizona. My dad was from New York and moved out here with his dad for his health reasons. So, yeah, I think that’s why a lot of people come. Exactly.

05:44
Michael Warren
I have got to ask this because as an old bald guy, these things stick out to me. Okay. You guys just went through a period where I think it was, like, 31 or 32 straight days. You were 110 stinking degrees. How do you live like that? I couldn’t do it.

06:03
Heidi Chase
Air conditioning. We were dependent on air conditioning. Always, everywhere.

06:10
Michael Warren
It’s funny when you go to Minneapolis or St. Paul, Minnesota, and you go downtown, many of the buildings have these covered walkways. And when I say covered, I mean, they’re completely encased, and they’re climate controlled, and they’re for use during the winter months. But those, I think, would have incredible value in Arizona during the summer months, which, in my experience, runs from about February until November is when your summer oh, yeah, definitely. My goodness. So you start off in Phoenix. You go to the academy. Now you’re wearing your dad’s badge number. I want to ask this, and I mean this, to show how this work has impact on the people that do the work. I would imagine that Heidi in the late 90s is much different than the Heidi now.

06:59
Heidi Chase
Oh, for sure. We’ve all evolved, I think, but part.

07:03
Michael Warren
Of it is because we’ve gotten older and we’ve become wiser. But I think a lot of people in the first responder field is because they’ve been exposed to a lot more that perhaps the general public hasn’t been. Was that your experience?

07:18
Heidi Chase
Yeah, you definitely have to grow up quick. I actually started with Phoenix Police Department in 1996. I was a cadet, which was like a preposition to a sworn officer. So I had a uniform. I went through an academy, but I wasn’t carrying a gun, driving a fully marked patrol car. That was definitely what caused me to grow up quickly.

07:40
Michael Warren
And so no one can say that you weren’t warned. I mean, you’ve got a grandpa and you’ve got a dad that were police officers. You did some work as a cadet, so you had to know kind of what you were getting into. But you become a patrol officer and you start working the streets. Was your perspective on the people that you dealt with? Was it different then than it was perhaps ten years ago? Because ten years ago, you were in this unit. Was your perspective of the people that you dealt with on a daily basis? Was it different?

08:12
Heidi Chase
Yeah, I mean, I definitely was in a more residential area in the first part of my career, so we used to joke, it’s West Phoenix. If you’ve ever been to Phoenix, it’s called Maryville. That’s kind of where the criminals lived. So they would go do their crimes, and then they’d come back to Maryville, and so that’s where we would always have contact with them, for sure. My perspective about a particular crime of prostitution was there was an actual eye opening moment for me, even after having been a police officer for about six years. That was when I was a school resource know? Every day we go and take our patrol car to the school, then return the keys at the end of our shift and I remember going into the Maryville police Station and in the juvenile holding area, I saw a girl that I knew when she was in 7th and eigth grade.

09:03
Heidi Chase
Now she’s about high school age, still a juvenile, but in trouble because she was caught up for prostitution. And so even after being an officer for six or so years, I was shocked that a young person was involved in that type of crime. I briefly had a conversation with her. She recognized me, I recognized her, but she was kind of stuck on this guy that she was with that she referred to as her boyfriend. But now looking back, obviously that was her trafficker. And she was unfortunately in a relationship with him and believed that she was in that relationship with him. That was going to be some amazing thing. And this is part of what the grooming is with trafficking, but she wasn’t ready to leave him or stop doing that behavior. And unfortunately, as an adult, she continued on doing that. So that’s what really sparked my interest in looking into that undercover unit.

10:00
Heidi Chase
Back then, it was called Vice, and that’s when I tested her position and started doing assignments with them.

10:07
Michael Warren
What you just said there, it’s hard for me now, looking back at the way I was at the beginning of my career, for some reason I could understand why a victim of domestic violence would stay in a situation they talk about, hey, got psychological control, they’ve got financial control, they’ve got all these things going on. And I could understand, at least logically, why someone would stay, but I couldn’t transfer that over to somebody like this girl that you were talking about, that she’s why she would stay in a life of crime. I viewed the domestic violence lady as a victim, but I viewed the girl you were talking about as a suspect. I feel guilty about it now, but it sounds like you had that same perspective at least at one point in your career.

10:56
Heidi Chase
Yeah, for sure. I have experienced both sides. Where I first started working this crime, doing the undercover work, were targeting the prostitutes, were arresting them, were going out doing operations on a daily. That was our suspect. We definitely have evolved and seen and learned just like we’re hoping that everyone else comes around to learning about the life of prostitution. Everything involved with the manipulation, the threats, the coercion, and actually seeing the victims that are out there that really are stuck in a situation that they don’t see a way out, their traffickers telling them that we are going to arrest them. And that’s what were doing before. And so we have a lot of repair work to do as far as our relationship with victims and having them see that we really are trying to help them get out of the life, get away from the situation, they’re in.

11:49
Brent Hinson
And it seems like I was watching this frontline documentary and it seems like we, and I’m talking about society as a whole, we use this term prostitution or prostitute and it’s almost like we’re feeding into the problem. We’re victim shaming and we’re making it worse. We’re playing a part in it, right?

12:08
Heidi Chase
Yeah, it’s definitely a crime and it is a situation where we’ve evolved to the point where we’re asking the question were never asking before, which is what can we do to help you get out of this? And we’re offering that. We’re giving them immediate assistance. We have a victim advocate that can help them. We have 24 hours backline numbers to shelters to get them situated and out. But there is definitely still some that choose not to take us up on our offer and then they go back to commit the crime and that’s when we have to take enforcement action. So there still is that because this issue is still a community problem. We have a duty to protect the community where it’s happening. And a lot of it’s a residential area where you’ve got people having sex in vehicles outside the window of a homeowner’s child’s bedroom or throwing condoms in their front yard.

13:04
Heidi Chase
Those kind of things still are going on and we have to take enforcement action but at the same time try and get help for potential victims. So it is definitely two sides of the same issue and we are at least working both sides now where weren’t before.

13:19
Michael Warren
And it seems like the focus has shifted. You’re probably not old enough to remember this, but I can remember when I was back in college, man, watching cops, that was like coursework for me, you know what I mean? But when they would do anything related to prostitution, the operation would target either the john or the prostitute. But it didn’t seem like there was any effort to roll it up to get to people that were running this thing. This is a philosophical question here. Do you think that perhaps we did that because it’s an easy stat to count? Hey, you know what? We busted twelve prostitutes today. We’re a profession that loves metrics because it shows that we’re doing something and hey wait, listen, we took twelve prostitutes off the street. We made a difference today. And I’m not saying that work wasn’t good, I just think maybe it was misguided.

14:11
Heidi Chase
Well, I can tell you that for sure. We’re status. I mean there’s a lot of people that joke that we pull over vehicles, a certain number of vehicles a day because we have a quota of some kind, which is not true as you know. But I think the perception is that were doing that and it is a quick easy arrest. We definitely still target sex buyers, the johns, because they’re creating the demand for this problem in the first place. And we absolutely do operations focused on getting buyers all the time. But definitely we’ve evolved into seeing who the real bad guys are, and that’s going to be the pimps, which are traffickers. It’s just a more professional way to say the name pimp. They are the one and the same. They are the same. And I don’t know, there’s confusion out there as far as the difference between a pimp and a trafficker.

15:00
Heidi Chase
They’re the same.

15:01
Brent Hinson
Market the word differently. They invented the word, I guess, right.

15:04
Heidi Chase
That’s what’s happened. But it’s a know, there’s a focus to go after them because they’re definitely benefiting from the exploitation of these victims and they’re the true bad guys. And so we’ve evolved to the point where doing cases where I am on social media, I have six undercover Facebooks, Instagram, tagged Meet Me, Bumble, plenty of Fish, Snapchat, all of these undercover personas so that we as undercovers are being solicited and groomed and recruited by traffickers. Instead of a live know. If you saw the documentary Sex Trafficking in America, you’ll see me on the phone with a pimp actively recruiting me right then on the, you know, part of the conversation is him trying to entice me and lead me into this life of prostitution, which is part of why we can charge him with the class five felony. And I think doing more of that kind of activity and getting detectives more well versed in how to have conversations with pimps and catfishing them is what I call it.

16:09
Heidi Chase
Getting them in custody, but also more than that, going after them financially because all of the money that they’re making is illegal. Larger investigations involving illegal enterprise, money laundering is really where we’re going to cut the head off the snake and be able to really attack traffickers and put a handle on this problem.

16:29
Brent Hinson
Well, I think I may be jumping ahead a little bit here, but I want to get this in early. How do we, as parents with children that are online, how do we get them to not fall into these traps? Because I think that’s something we need to hit on at the front end so we can get that information out as much as possible and as loud as possible.

16:52
Heidi Chase
Yes, we grew up with I had a brick phone, no internet, right? So we’re dealing with a generation of young people that are growing up with a whole computer in their hands. And I don’t think we’ve prepared as parents or the community to recognize how dangerous that is. When we set them up at the restaurant with a movie and an iPad I’ve seen in the airport, young kids as young as seven, eight years old swiping through TikTok, and their parents are eating and not paying attention to what they’re looking at, what they’re doing, or anyone that’s engaging with them. That’s where this problem was able to infiltrate into homes. And literally we have a situation where we have kids being solicited and recruited and groomed from their own bedroom because there’s no supervision, there’s no safeguards, there’s just availability to all these devices where these kids are at and these predators go to find the kids.

17:53
Heidi Chase
Predators, sex buyers and traffickers are all there in your kids bedrooms through the means of your devices. So we need to definitely stop that. The tips that I would say would be have a conversation. You’re going to have conversation with your kids about stranger danger. I’m not sure where that went, but we need to bring it back. Conversations about people trying to infiltrate you on these devices and talk to you, ask you to be secretive about it, to hide it, to delete messages, all those things that are encouraged by the bad guy to keep it a secret and keep it going on behind parents backs. And I don’t think parents realize and it’s not necessarily that their kids are lying initially, but they’re being encouraged to do those things by the trafficker or by the sex buyer or the predator. So definitely there are resources out there.

18:45
Heidi Chase
I have resources on my website about what parents need to be doing to protect their children from traffickers and sex trafficking going on these devices. And then there are companies out there that actually have phones and watches and internet routers that will disseminate this kind of activity and alert parents that someone’s trying to encourage their child to send a nude picture or have a conversation with the child with explicit content. And so that’s what we need to be doing when we have parents wondering. I have them ask me all the time. My eight year old wants a phone and is upset with me because everyone in the class has a phone. And it’s like, if you’re going to get them a phone that can protect them.

19:34
Michael Warren
Yes. And oftentimes parents will buy phones as a safety measure. Hey, well, they’re going to be home for an hour after school before I get home from work. They need to be able to call for help. And I get that. But that’s not the only danger. I think that parents are a lot like law enforcement because law enforcement often falls behind technology. It develops more quickly than we’re prepared to deal with it. And parents, I think that’s what happened to them with the advent of the phone. And so I’m going to show my age here. When I was a teenager at night, when the family came in for the night and we closed the door, nothing was in the house. The only way that something could get into the house would be to break in or a phone call. But the phones are so loud that it wakes the dead.

20:23
Michael Warren
And that’s no longer the case. You shut the door at your house at night. There are so many ways, so many avenues, so many apps that people can infiltrate your home and affect your kid when you’re sitting beside them. And if we’re not paying attention, that’s when the bad guy is going to strike.

20:42
Heidi Chase
Yeah. And those apps, I mean, there’s new ones every day coming out. So it’s definitely overwhelming as a parent and as law enforcement to keep up on all of that. For sure.

20:53
Michael Warren
I want to point out, and Bren already referenced it, but folks, go to the episode page, click on the link, go watch that documentary. It’s eye opening, it’s disturbing, but it’s needed. And there was a young lady in there that was rescued, 16 years old at the time. And one of the things that she said that really bothered me, not because of something she did, but she said, I’d never even heard of sex trafficking. And it goes back to it’s a sad world that we have to have that conversation, but kids have to have an idea of the danger so they know the signals to look for, don’t they?

21:32
Heidi Chase
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s all about having those conversations and then actually setting expectations of we have a rule that if someone’s trying to contact you, I need you to tell me. We have a rule that if someone’s encouraging you to take a nude picture or an explicit picture, that those go on the Internet and you can never get them back, you can never pull them off. And I think that those conversations mean so much, even more than just sex trafficking. Kids that are getting bullied, kids that are committing suicide over things that are happening at school, all of that could be negated if parents were more involved and had conversations in advance.

22:12
Michael Warren
It requires work, but parenting is not supposed to be easy. It’s supposed to be meaningful and it’s supposed to be purposeful and intentional. And I think perhaps that’s lacking. But I want to go back for a second, if I could, to the transition from calling them pimps to traffickers. If you’ve ever listened to the podcast, our listeners, they know that I’m a big believer in the power of words because when I hear pimp, I think about somebody sleazy, and they are sleazy, but it doesn’t portray what’s really going on because traffic here, it seems higher level and more organized and more powerful. And I think powerful is how we have to describe the hold that they have on these young ladies. Because you talked about the scene where you were being asked to join and that’s exactly hey, listen, I’m going to take care of everything for you, making sure that you look and kudos to you because you didn’t laugh out loud.

23:13
Michael Warren
Because I wanted to. Listening to that dude, hey, I got to worry about your nails and how you look. Make sure you get your beauty sleep and everything. I don’t think people understand how powerful the hold is that these folks have on these young women.

23:27
Heidi Chase
Yeah, I mean, when I train about this particular topic to law enforcement and community members, I talk about the manipulation and the isolation, all of these tactics. That a pimp and trafficker, same one and the same use to control victims, male and female. We talk a lot about female because we have females come forward the most. And there’s different dynamics as to why males don’t come forward, but there are definitely male victims out there also. We just don’t have a lot of them coming forward as readily as females. But when we have this situation where a trafficker is trying to encourage a person to go with them and run away, it’s alluring is what it is. They’re luring them away from home, luring them away from the familiar, taking them to an unknown location, taking them where they are kind of feeling like they’re dependent on this other person because they don’t know where they are.

24:24
Heidi Chase
They don’t have ID. Part of the control is taking their phone away. And no one remembers phone numbers anymore these days because they’re in our phone, right? Imagine being 14 years old, lured away. Go with this person, he takes you to another state. You can’t get on a plane because you don’t have ID. You can’t call home because you don’t know your phone number. Part of the isolation also is they control your social media so you no longer even can log in. And then the threats. The threats are extremely real. When I teach, I talk about how I’ve learned that traffickers are the most reliable people you will ever meet. Because if they say they’re going to beat you up. If they say they’re going to take you in the car, they’re going to point a gun at your parents house. And depending on their mood at that moment, they may or may not fire the gun.

25:13
Heidi Chase
They’re going to get you in the car, they’re going to take you to your parents house, and they’re going to point a gun at your parents house. You believing that what they say is going to happen is that fear that they create, you completely believe that. And as long as they can keep you on that page of believing everything they say is going to happen, you will stay with them because you don’t want to have that inevitable threat to be carried out. The isolation is really real for them. Also taking them from city to city, state to state. They’re very transient. They’re moving around constantly because they don’t want to get caught by the police, of course. But two, they don’t want their victims to get to know a normal person, let’s say the hotel desk clerk, because that person might convince them to leave their trafficker.

26:00
Heidi Chase
And they don’t want that to happen either because that means they’ll lose money. And so that’s also part of this whole dynamic is the isolation. But it really is a whole bunch of things going on. I also tell people this is their job all day long. They don’t have a regular job. They work on being up in your business, knowing everything about what’s going on with the victims they have, and then going and trying to find more to make more money. That’s all it is.

26:27
Brent Hinson
Obviously, we want to focus on education, awareness about this topic, but also this podcast is about personal stories. And you were undercover for 13 years, seeing this day in and day out. How does that affect you personally?

26:43
Heidi Chase
Well, I think, and a lot of people do ask me that, and as I train, I do bring in case studies and I present those case studies, and each time I hear the victim describe what happened to them, I get choked up, I get teary eyed, because I remember exactly that moment. And I feel bad for them and what happened to them. It definitely affects me emotionally, for sure. I just recently got remarried, but there was a long period of time where I was single and I was very cautious about dating and meeting people and this whole online scene and all of that, because that is scary. And I do know cases where adult women, older even in their 40s, have been lured into trafficking and in that situation as well. But for me, the whole point of my entire existence there in the unit and how long I ended up staying was because I take a lot of pride in all of the cases that I’ve investigated and all the traffickers that I put in prison for hundreds of years.

27:44
Heidi Chase
I have one case, if you’d like, an example, that resulted in a huge sentence, and it might even be a record for the United States. It involves seven victims. It was familial trafficking. Now, familial trafficking basically means a person that is trafficking the victim, that the victim knows that person. It could be a stepfather, a brother, a cousin. This instance happened to be the victim’s uncle, but also a boyfriend. And I don’t want to leave that out because that’s important for people to know too. Familial trafficking isn’t just relatives. It could be a person that you’re in a relationship with as well. But this case basically had seven victims, two juveniles. The first juvenile was his niece, and he first offended on her by having sex with her when she was 13. She was living up in northern Arizona. Her mother was incarcerated and ended up passing away.

28:40
Heidi Chase
And she was living with her elderly grandmother, his mother. She doesn’t know who her father was. At one point, she thought maybe he was her father because there was some incest going on. So anyway, she gets in some trouble and has to be brought down to Phoenix to live with him because she kind of got in trouble. So the grandma and him decided, I’ll give her some father influence and have her. Come down to Phoenix. And so he unfortunately introduced her at about 14 and a half to his brothel that he had running out of his house with a whole bunch of other female adult females. And then there was a 17 year old girl who happened to be his stepdaughter. They were all trafficked for multiple years. She, at 16, almost 17 years old, decided to get out of it and talk to her older sister, who barely believed her, and luckily called the police that day.

29:30
Heidi Chase
But he had the whole family thinking that this victim was a truancy problem, that she wasn’t going to school and all this. But luckily, she called the police. And that’s what started the entire investigation. This went to trial. It was the biggest trial of my career. It lasted seven months. I testified eleven times. That main victim, when it finally went to trial, she was in her 20s, so it took about five years from the date of disclosure to go to trial. She testified for 18 days. I told her she’s the bravest person I’ve ever met because she faced her uncle for 18 days. And at one point, she got so upset, she, in front of the jury, ran out of the courtroom off the stand and had to come back in after she calmed down. But definitely this individual had a fascination with The Story of O, which is a French pornography film and book, and it’s kind of like the Bondage dominant submissive.

30:25
Heidi Chase
He had done a bunch of awful things to these women, sodomized them with a riding crop with a dildo on it and beat them and chained them up. And they weren’t allowed to wear underwear. They weren’t allowed to cross their legs when they sat down. All kinds of rules. One of the women had a dog collar she had to wear, and she was literally chained to the wall. But anyway, what’s unique about that is that in 2015, when were going through trial, we sequestered 600 jurors and through the Voidir, we talked to them about the movie and book series that was just released in 20, 15, 50 Shades of Gray. 50 Shades of Gray almost makes that whole scene of Bondage and the dominant and the submissive kind of an acceptable fantasy thing.

31:09
Brent Hinson
Right.

31:09
Heidi Chase
And we want to make sure we found a jury that did not see that as okay to be doing to women. And so we found our jury, and luckily, they were an amazing jury. He was initially charged with 130 counts because of the seven victims, two juveniles. The jury deliberated for four days on 105 counts and found him guilty on 101.

31:32
Michael Warren
Wow.

31:33
Heidi Chase
The reason why some of the counts got dismissed is because this case went on so long that things that we charged back four years ago, if they can’t remember the details, to testify about it’s as though it didn’t happen. And so, ultimately, 105 counts found guilty on 101, and the jury came back with that and the judge sentenced him to 493.5 years.

31:55
Brent Hinson
Oh, that’s amazing.

31:56
Michael Warren
It’s one of those things that I don’t think that people really grasp how difficult it is to testify in a situation like that. And it’s weird because I think a lot of people get it when we’re talking about little kids who are the victims of sexual assault. They get that, but they often struggle with understanding how difficult it can be for an adult to testify. Because when you go in again, folks go and watch a documentary and you watch this young lady, in some ways, she was very matter of fact about some of the things that happened to her. Oh, yeah, well, that’s the room right there. In that room right there, that’s where this guy, he choked me for the first time. But when she started talking about having to get up in front of those people who had done that to her and telling that story again, it completely changed the dynamic.

32:43
Michael Warren
And we have to understand that a reluctance to testify doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. It just means that it’s traumatic. PTSD. PTSI. We recognize it in military and law enforcement, first responders. That type of injury also happens in victims.

33:00
Brent Hinson
I think we talked with James Ozzy that’s victimizing them almost again, right?

33:04
Heidi Chase
Yeah. So the main victim that I’ve talked about, she was 21, I think, and I spent seven months with her, and I feel that she’s stuck at 16, mentally, at least back then. This is in 2015. She was immature, she was meek, and she didn’t have a job. She never drove a car even know, I’ve since had conversations with her and we’re Facebook friends and all that, and she’s better now. But definitely the trauma that she endured really affected her mentally and caused her to go back in time as far as mentally.

33:43
Michael Warren
So you brought up another point that I picked up in the documentary as well. One of the folks made the statement, I can’t believe how many fetishes people have, but as society, when we have things like that 50 Shades of Gray, you’re talking about having to go through and recognize that these aren’t normal. And they certainly aren’t normal when we’re talking about with kids, and we’re certainly not talking about it when that person has no choice in the matter. But it just seems like there has been a significant increase in that type of deviant behavior. Is that something that you saw over the course of your time in the unit?

34:22
Heidi Chase
Yeah, and I would say it’s definitely getting worse because there are sites out there like OnlyFans and other sites that are hosting literally amateur pornography or pornography at your fingertips. All you have to do is have a membership and pay this person and they’ll make a video for you and send it to you. That is definitely going to be really bad. I’ve already got parents. I’ve had several contact me and tell me about their 18 year old that quit college and is doing that, and they’re on a contract and they’re kind of almost being coerced to do this sexual content or else legal action, which is crazy. How could that even be a thing? That’s where we’re moving right now with these websites and their ability to exploit victims so quickly and have it be.

35:12
Michael Warren
Something on demand for our listeners who aren’t in law enforcement. You need to understand how laws are made, how court decisions are made to address things like you just talked about. It takes a while for this evolution for us to realize there’s a problem. Then you have to get somebody that understands the problem that’s willing to sponsor and write a bill to try and address this. But just like it takes a long time to get from arrest to court, oftentimes it takes a long time to get from recognition of a problem to being able to do something about the problem.

35:45
Heidi Chase
Yeah, and it’s definitely also an issue where the Internet is not just the United States. And so, like with the Cesta Foster Act that was signed by President Trump in 2018, I believe it was, that act took down Backpage and the adult services section of Craigslist, and that is the websites that hosted a lot of the advertisements of the prostitution ads. But when that happened, unfortunately, all these other websites popped up, and they’re not in the United States, and so they don’t really care about our laws. And the Internet’s a free area. It’s definitely made it a lot more difficult with all of these non local to the United States entities that are hosting the ability for this kind of activity to explode.

36:31
Michael Warren
And you guys referenced that in the documentary, how Good Things Have a Cost Too back page goes down. But now you got to go and find out what replaced it, because it’s like when you’re doing a Dope investigation, hey, you got a dirty phone. But when they drop the phone, you have to go and find the new number. And until you do, all this stuff’s going on. And so I want to ask you this right here to get your perspective on it, because I think that this is another misunderstanding in society. In Michigan, where I did my career and where I live, there’s a prosecutor, a county prosecutor that has decided to no longer prosecute in the county any prostitution related crimes. And the reference is, and I used to use this term back early in my career, we’re not going to waste resources on victimless crimes because society is the victim.

37:24
Michael Warren
How dangerous perspective and outlook is that, knowing what we know about human trafficking?

37:31
Heidi Chase
Well, I think that prosecutor needs to be dealt with. But definitely a lot of people ask me about decriminalization of prostitution and I think I’m not the one to ask. I think the person to ask is the survivors, the victims that were living this life and the ramifications of decriminalization and their opinions on it. And I think you’ll be surprised that they’re against it. The most of the ones that I.

37:57
Brent Hinson
Different answers, I’m sure.

37:59
Heidi Chase
Yeah, most of them are. Because it will be basically an open field for pimps to exploit even more people. No ramifications at all. And I think that’s the wrong direction. I think we can learn from other countries that have done that. I think there’s studies, I think it’s Norway. Is it Norway or Netherlands where they decriminalized and it’s just blown up and it’s even worse of a problem than it was before. And I think we need to listen to survivors and learn from other people’s mistakes.

38:27
Michael Warren
Go and listen to, again, referring back to your documentary, kat and I wrote it down. Here she goes. I want to have a future and the folks to get wrapped up in this. I think that the thing that they are probably lacking the most is hope. If there’s no hope of the criminal justice system, the one system that should be coming in and providing some avenue of escape, if they say, hey, we’re no longer going to do something, then they really don’t have any hope.

38:53
Heidi Chase
Yeah, definitely. There’s so much going on with what victims go through and the PTSD, just like you said, the violence that they’ve endured, the shame, the lack of support from family, whether it’s perceived or it’s know, they’ve discontinued relationships with the victim, all kinds of dynamics. Really difficult to help them when they get out of the life. And that’s why we have a lot of non governmental organizations that help us. Like Arizona specifically has the anti trafficking network. We have an organization called Soul Survivor that helps remove the tattoo brands that are put on victims, all kinds of counseling services, survivor victim advocates that actually live the life that come back out or that are out and help with especially juveniles that were trying to rescue out of trafficking because they’re in love with this pimp. And so having a survivor victim advocate help with that is huge.

39:51
Michael Warren
Well, Heidi and I apologize, I don’t remember the name of the organization, but there was a home that Kat went to, and she had tried living a home, and she went to get some treatment and to have this support. They were talking to one of the workers and they said, listen, we’re always full, we don’t have nearly enough. And I would imagine that even if we doubled that it still wouldn’t handle what really needs to be going on to provide the support for these young ladies. And I keep saying young ladies, and I recognize that they are young men, but by and large, they tend to be young ladies, that there’s not enough support with all we have going, there’s still a need out there.

40:30
Heidi Chase
Yeah, that’s the dream center. And that’s the other part of this whole entire situation is you’ve got law enforcement with the job of going after the bad guys and getting the victims out, but we need a whole mechanism and a team of people to help with the actual recovery of victims. And so places like the Dream Center, shelters that are open for juveniles and or adults separate, obviously are really lacking in a lot of other states that don’t have funding or grants available or even people to staff those locations. So that’s definitely huge. And I get asked all the time by people wanting to get involved and help with this problem and join the fight, especially after Sound of Freedom. Human trafficking is on everyone’s mind right now, which is amazing. That’s never been the case before, no matter how anyone feels about that movie, at least human trafficking is in people’s minds.

41:26
Heidi Chase
So basically, if we definitely could get more efforts towards the recovery side, like, we’ve got the job law enforcement to get people out of the light, but we got to go bust down doors and get the bad guy. We need someone to help support the victim at that point that we can turn them over because prior to using our victim advocate, that was a hat that we wore also. And it was really hard to answer phone calls at three in the morning to the victim advocate when I’ve got to be up for a search warrant early at 06:00 a.m., you know what I mean? Those kind of dynamics. So definitely assistance with the aftercare of victims. And then even when we’re rescuing victims, we used to have organizations and churches and people donate backpacks with toiletries, hoodies, flip flops undergarments the basic needs. And we could give the kid a backpack or the adult survivor a backpack because they’re worried about their property back in the hotel room and all it is their makeup and their hair tie and their underwear.

42:30
Heidi Chase
I mean, that’s all it is. And if we can give them property of their own that belongs to them that the trafficker hasn’t said is mine, all you have is mine, I can take it away, that’s huge. But we don’t have the collective ability to get all that. And so if we have organizations that will collect that and donate that’s huge too.

42:50
Brent Hinson
And it has to be a mental health thing of almost having to reprogram your brain because you’ve been manipulated to think a certain way for so long. You have to re acclimate yourself into just being, quote unquote, living a normal life, I guess.

43:09
Heidi Chase
Yeah. And that’s where we definitely lean on those non governmental organizations that can take victims to go to job interviews, take them shopping to get clothes for the interviews, help them get their ID restored, help them with any minimal charges they might be facing. I mean, that’s the whole other part of the situation is we had a victim once that literally had a prison sentence. Her name’s Leah Rogers and she was facing a prison sentence. And myself and the other detective, it was actually her case. But went to go talk to her. She was almost going to go to prison, but the reason she hadn’t talked to us is because her child was being withheld from her and her child became safe all of a sudden. And she immediately called and we came down to the prison almost. She was there getting transported soon. And we talked to her and then that’s when she told us everything about what happened.

44:03
Heidi Chase
That’s when were able to re approach the judge and get her charges dismissed. As long as she committed to a rehab program, getting her out of the life for one year. She’s now an author of a book. She travels around speaking as a survivor. We need to be there to support them in the legal regard also with their charges in the past. I mean, there’s definitely also the defense that when you were trafficking victim, you were made to sell drugs, you were made to rob people by the trafficker. But there is definitely going to be a line though, because I have had people talk to me about that one case. I think it was in the news recently where these people were smuggled into the country and then they committed a whole bunch of crimes and they tried to claim human trafficking defense. It’s a case by case, each one.

44:48
Heidi Chase
But there’s definitely some more understanding needed in regards to actual trafficking victims.

44:55
Michael Warren
One of the young ladies that was Survivor on the documentary she talked about, we have to remember that they prey upon the vulnerable for all the ones that are drawn in and are then trafficked. What we often forget are there were some that refused it. And so the scope of this is probably much broader than what most people realize because it’s kind of like the drug trade. For all the tons of drugs that are intercepted at the border and God bless them, we need to do it. But how many are getting past the border? How many people that are rescued? How many aren’t rescued? I don’t think people have a good understanding of how big this problem is in the United States. Supposedly an advanced country with morals and laws and a strong legal system. I don’t think they have an understanding of how broad it is.

45:44
Heidi Chase
Yeah, and then to go along with that, I mean, a lot of these victims don’t realize they’re even a victim of anything. So they’re not coming forward saying, hey Detective Chance, please come talk to me. We have to go find them. And when we go find them, typically that’s a negative contact.

45:59
Michael Warren
I really like your input on this. It would seem that if somebody is illegally brought into the country, that’s just another thing that can be held over the head of the victim there to stay in there, say, well, hey, listen, you can go to the police if you want to, but they’re not going to believe you. You’re here illegally, you’re going to get sent back anyway and your family is going to be gone. And it just seems like that the way we go about a lot of our things actually deters these victims from coming forward.

46:32
Heidi Chase
Yeah, anything that a trafficker can use to keep their victims, the phrase in pocket is a term used to describe their loyalty, I guess, to the trafficker. And so anything that they can say and threaten and use, they will. And for sure they’ve used us. As far as law enforcement is just going to arrest you and you’re just going to get deported if you call the police. Definitely. There are visas and things that are available to actual victims of trafficking. So we do have that understanding for sure as far as individuals brought over, muggled over from other countries. So that’s definitely in place already. It’s just not something well known. It’s not something that local law enforcement, like smaller agencies even know that we have access to. And so it’s really a matter of knowing that it’s available and then knowing where to send your victim to or.

47:26
Michael Warren
Help them get that I want to throw out there. One of the things that really caught my attention on the documentary was when the three dirt bags were sentenced and they said that, hey, they’re going to have to register as sex offenders. Is that something that you have in Arizona, that if somebody’s involved in this type of crime that they do have to register as a sex offender?

47:49
Heidi Chase
Yes, definitely. And that’s, you know, part of helping to keep them from going back and victimizing someone else.

47:56
Michael Warren
Well, I found that interesting because in many states you have to go on the sex offender list if you have, like we call them here, the Jack and Jill relationships. Two teenagers that are both under the age of consent or one’s below the age of consent and one’s not. But it’s all consensual. You still have to register as a sex offender, but someone who engages in this type of activity doesn’t and that just seems so off. I applaud Arizona for having that type thing right there. As we are starting to wrap things up here. One of the things that I’ve learned from you and from the documentary is that we need to start putting the same efforts into follow up investigations in these type things right here that we do in narcotics arrests. I think that we got very good when you would catch somebody with dope on a car, you’d try to roll it up to get to the next level, but that’s not always the case when it comes to prostitution related type crimes.

48:56
Michael Warren
We need to start trying to go to the next level, because that’s where the real evil exists.

49:01
Heidi Chase
Well, I think a lot of that is back in 1998, when I was in the police academy, I didn’t have a human trafficking class exactly. Phoenix Police Department. I made the class. I wrote the lesson planned. We only started teaching in the academy, our own officers, in 2014.

49:16
Michael Warren
Wow.

49:16
Heidi Chase
So we have a whole bunch of generations officers that don’t even look for that as their first inclination. We’re looking for drugs. We’re looking for gangsters, and the pimps know it. I’ve got a Facebook Live video that I show at the academy, pretty much to piss people off, because it’s this pimp bragging about the five patrol cars that are in the parking lot dealing with whatever they’re dealing with, and he’s bragging that they don’t see him. He’s throwing money around. He’s yelling at his prostitute. And he’s not wrong because we don’t see him, because we aren’t even looking. And so training is huge for that. As far as getting officers to even see what’s right in front of them.

49:54
Michael Warren
I think we have to start talking about there has to be at least a shared focus when our officers are out there, we’re very good, focused, looking for the bad guy. I think we need to have the same type of focus, looking for victims. You see signs in airports. Hey, if you see anything suspicious, call this number right here. But it can’t be casual. I think it has to be very intentional, and it requires proper training. And it sounds like that’s what you’re involved in now that you’re quote, unquote, retired, but we both know that you’re not fully retired, because that never really happens.

50:31
Heidi Chase
Yeah. So part of my consulting business is local training to community members, but also a focus on training law enforcement nationally. I travel around, and I do virtual as well, training about undercover operations. I just did an operation catching the sex buyer in the act, training for my other job, which is I’m an instructor for the National Criminal Justice Training Center Amber Alert program through Fox La Technical College. And so I’ve traveled all over the United States, actually, since 2014, training about sex trafficking, interviewing victims, interrogating suspects, putting cases together. But more importantly, even now, is doing proactive undercover operations, targeting these traffickers and sex buyers, and then doing the investigations on the traffickers financially through the money laundering illegal enterprise means. And so that’s what I really enjoy doing. I wish I could do that full time, and I definitely am available through my website for anyone who wants to seek out that kind of training if.

51:39
Michael Warren
They wanted to find out more information about that training. What is your website? And we’ll put it in the show notes, but go ahead and tell our listeners what it is.

51:46
Heidi Chase
So pun intended. It’s a chanceforawareness.com. My last name’s chance.

51:52
Michael Warren
Okay, so you do travel, and you do it virtually. So there’s no reason why somebody who wanted the training, they couldn’t get it. Heidi, it’s amazing to me when Brent and I get to meet people like you. The job that you do at law enforcement is a noble profession. I believe it to be one of the most noble professions. But the people who go out and protect those, they are unable to protect themselves psychologically, financially, and the work that you do is fantastic. And as we close, folks, go and watch a documentary, but there’s a place in there where one of your partners was on the phone trying to set up someone to come and purchase her services. And as soon as she gets off the phone, her husband calls and she talked about how the kids doing? Okay, well, I got to go now because I got to go talk to this guy about the services that he wants.

52:46
Michael Warren
Thank you for what you do. Thank you for what you continue to do. You do make a difference, and it’s got to be incredibly rewarding, but it also has to come at an incredible cost to you personally. So thank you for paying that cost.

52:59
Heidi Chase
Yeah, definitely. I mean, the unit that I was in, we’re very close. We’re still very close, even though I retired. And they work so hard, I don’t think people realize they switch their hours. They work 18 hours shifts. They are working really hard to make an impact on this super overwhelming problem to our listeners.

53:18
Michael Warren
Please take time. Watch a documentary. Please go to her website. If you’re not a decision maker at your agency or with your organization, and it doesn’t matter if you’re law enforcement or not, try to get that training in there because it’s going to make you personally safer. It’s going to make those around you safer. It’s going to make the community safer. And that’s what we as society should be striving for. Listen, man, these topics are always hard, but it’s always encouraging to me when we can have the conversations with people who have not only identified the problem, they are working hard to solve it. And that’s what we had today, and.

53:54
Brent Hinson
People need to hear it. And Heidi has an abundance of resources on her website that we will link to. Also, there are some phone numbers if people happen to listen and they need to get out of this life and they need help. And we have phone numbers. There are websites. All those types of things are right there. And correct me if I’m wrong, Heidi, I want to make sure I’m giving the right numbers out. Also, you can text be free to 233733.

54:28
Heidi Chase
Yeah, the National Human Trafficking Hotline. And then I also have a course on my website that the community members could take if they want to get a full I mean, this was only an hour, but a full instruction on the human trafficking problem happening here domestically in the United States.

54:47
Brent Hinson
Yeah. So on this podcast, we like to shine a light on the issues that are taking place in society as a whole. But we also try to offer some sort of solution or some sort of resolution of what we can do to moved things forward. And hopefully, by going to your website, by going to the episode page, people can do that. So, Heidi, like Mike said, I echo what he says. We can’t thank you enough for your service, for what you’ve done to make this world a better place.

55:14
Heidi Chase
Thank you so much.