Trafficking

gators for human trafficking cases. She also agreed that cops need better approaches — a prostitution charge is not the way to handle someone in crisis, she said.

“I need officers who do not look at these girls in disgust but are rather the victim of a bigger problem,” Willis said.

It’s not only the right thing to do, she said, but it would help reduce serious crime: “Human trafficking is now becoming one of the major ways gangs are operating and making money.”

Meadows agreed: “Gangs are finding it more profitable to traffic in human beings than drugs. Why? The penalties aren’t as stiff.”

It’s tough for an airport-adjacent city like College Park, with 15,000 residents and roughly 30 hotel/motels that are popular spots for human trafficking, said College Park’s interim police chief Thomas Kuzniacki.

He said some commanding officers encourage their beat cops to just take reports and get back into service instead of analyzing what’s in front of them. Others are “overwhelmed when they see human trafficking or sexual assault (cases).”

Willis said human trafficking came to the forefront because she suspects that it, along with racism, was a factor in the mass shooting spree that killed eight people at spas around metro Atlanta two months ago. Six of the victims were Asian women.

Willis announced the indictment of 22-year-old Robert Aaron Long, who is white, on Tuesday. She plans to pursue hate crime charges for the first time in Fulton.

The narrative that these women were sex workers has been disputed by multiple family members of the slain women as another example of anti-asian hate.

Willis told the AJC on Wednesday that she has been touring some of the spas involved, but she has publicly presented no evidence to show human trafficking in them. She said human trafficking investigations will be a top priority for her in 2022.

She also said she would love to see collaboration that would result in racketeering, or RICO, charges for any human trafficking at spas.

“If those cases got RICO – and you got a DA that don’t mind – the forfeiture could pay back what you put into it,” she said.

The state’s human trafficking hotline is 1-866-ENDHTGA (1-866-363-4842).