BALTIMORE — Baltimore firefighters do more than save people from burning buildings. They're now also trained to save victims of human trafficking.
It's all part of an effort for the city's Anti-Human Trafficking Collaborative to train as many agencies as possible on how to identify victims of this under-reported crime.
We've all heard the phrase "see something, say something." But in order to see something, you have to know what you're looking for.
After getting trained by Baltimore's anti-human trafficking manager, Thomas Stack, many of the city's firefighters and EMS staff realized- they've come across human trafficking victims before.
"I had guys come up to me after every single class I taught and say, you know what, I've seen that, I just didn't know what it was," Stack recalled.
"I had no idea. I was with everybody else in the department - we didn't know it was an issue," Stack added.
Now that they're armed with the knowledge, Lieutenant Colleen Lull says it's an issue that's impossible to ignore.
"We've had 3 or 4 this week. Now that's not typical, that's a lot. But I would say it's not uncommon for us to have one a week now," Lt. Lull said.
The fire department was first taught which red flags to look for.
"One of the big signs is not being able to speak for themselves. There's a third party that constantly interrupts, wants to be in the back of the ambulance with them, and answer questions for them. And we tell them - get them alone, get them by themselves," Stack said.
But identifying a victim is only half the battle. The majority - don't want to accept help.
"So what we do at that point is we want to plant the seed, we want to let them know that, listen - when you need help, we're here to help," Stack explained.
Members of the fire department have a way of getting the human trafficking hotline number into the hands of the victim, without the trafficker recognizing what it is.
"Because if we leave them with a brochure, if you need help call the human trafficking hotline, that can be physically dangerous to them," Stack said.
It's all about trust, and building that trust can take time. But when the firefighters leave a scene, that isn't the end of the story. There's people like Lt. Lull, always following up.
"This isn't just the check of a box. Someone is watching it, someone is following it," Lt. Lull said.
