HPD officers work to find solution to human trafficking in Homewood

In 2019 and in 2020, the Homewood Police Department recovered seven human trafficking victims, despite the unit facing restrictions for half of 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sgt. Eric Marquard is the department’s Vice/Narcotics Unit supervisor and has led the unit’s human trafficking operations for the past several years. He said the unit started focusing on prostitution and human trafficking in 2015. Right away, the unit saw two back-to-back busts. Marquard said he will never forget how painful the first bust was.

The case involved two women from Tennessee who were desperate for money, Marquard said. The women decided to leave town on the weekends to go to the city to work as prostitutes.

“They were just hurting for money,” Marquard said. “They weren’t strung-out or heroin addicts or anything like that. They were just hurting for money.”

When they got there, they met a man who threatened the women and told them they had to work for him. He took their phones, he discovered where the women’s children were staying, and he threatened their children.

“He ended up carrying this woman around, and eventually they came to Homewood,” Marquard said. “By the time she came to Homewood and I interacted with her, she had not seen her kids in like a month. She was terrified and exhausted.

“When you run into something like that, you can’t not be touched by it. You can’t not be galvanized into some kind of action. This ain’t gonna fly.”

Homewood has a significant prostitution problem, Marquard said, and where there’s a prostitution problem, there’s also an undercurrent of human trafficking.

Based on what suspects and victims have told him, Homewood sees this kind of activity because of the significant number of inexpensive hotels that are close to the interstate. Suspects and victims have also said they like Homewood because it feels safe.

“What we hear a lot of is, ‘We go to Homewood because we won’t get robbed. We go to Homewood because it’s relatively safe for us to operate in Homewood as opposed to us getting victimized downtown by other players,’” Marquard said.

Homewood’s proximity to Birmingham also plays a part in the reason why prostitution is a problem. Many of the individuals Marquard speaks to are on a circuit, he said, so they might travel to Mississippi, then to Tennessee, then to Georgia, then to Birmingham.

“And we are a node on that circuit,” Marquard said. “So as they roll along, they’ll have places in each city they typically go to and typically avoid. And we are a place in Birmingham they’ll go to as opposed to avoiding. There’s a lot of hotels they can go to, they’re close together, and they’re right near the interstate, so they can get on and off. And it’s comparatively safe for them.”

With seven human trafficking victims rescued in the past couple of years, it can seem like there are an uptick in cases in Homewood. This is partly caused by trends in criminal activities. Prior to 2015, the Vice/Narcotics Unit had focused on the street level drug trade, Marquard said, but then he began to notice a shift in behaviors.

“I know of a number of drug dealers who are phasing out that kind of thing and have gone to girls,” he said. “It’s safer for them from a law enforcement standpoint: They’re not carrying drugs anymore, they’re not doing drug deals anymore, and so they’re making more money running girls, and they’re getting popped less because they’re not ever touching evidence anymore.”

To attack Homewood’s human trafficking problem, Marquard said the unit has been building rapport with the women involved with human trafficking and prostitution. This takes time, he said, and the unit has only focused on prostitution for the past five years.

Some of the women don’t want to talk to an officer, and almost all of them won’t share everything. But they will often confide something, Marquard said. Instead of sharing something about themselves, women are more likely to talk about other women they’re worried about.

“In my opinion, most of these girls are victims at some level,” he said. “Regardless of how they got to where they are, they aren’t leading the life they wanted. They may have made choices to lead to where they are, but they are victims of something. If you can see past that and talk to them, a lot of times you can develop a rapport with them.”

Sometimes the women will try to use the officers to help solve their own problems.

“And I’m OK with that as long as their problems and my problems are congruent,” Marquard said. “If I can further my own objectives by helping them out, then I will.”

The unit also receives tips from citizens, and the unit immediately follows up on every tip, he said.

The Homewood Police Department runs as many prostitution operations as they can safely and legitimately, he said. The pandemic made that difficult this year, though, and in addition, the civil unrest and protests over the summer also took up the department’s time, he said.

“It’s a small unit — it’s not a huge department,” Marquard said. “There’s four of us in this unit, and I think every one of us is wearing three or four different hats.”

Homewood’s newly elected mayor, Patrick McClusky, said battling this issue is extremely important to him.

“I’m of the opinion that this is the most horrific and senseless crime that our society is dealing with currently,” he said. “It’s a difficult and devastating issue due to the complexity and hidden nature of the crime. We need to come together as a community to help the victims and educate ourselves on the signs of trafficking in our communities.”

He said the Homewood Police Department is doing a great job, and he said he is committed to helping them however he can.

“I am planning to meet with our HPD Special Task Force, neighboring municipalities and other community leaders with the intent to help in the fight against trafficking,” he said. “I understand that it won’t be easy, and it certainly won’t happen overnight, but I am committed to working toward a resolution nonetheless.”

Looking to the future, Marquard said furthering education is important to him. Keeping the officers educated allows them to see nationwide trends.

“There have been times where we have seen things coming because they were being done in California or in Vegas,” he said. “We’ve always got to be adaptive to what the bad guys are doing. We study them, they study us. I don’t want to be the unit that only catches the dumb ones.”

He also said he hopes to see citywide training on human trafficking in the future.