Marian Hatcher and Michael Shively

00:02 Hi, my name is Reverend doctor, Marian Hatcher. And I'm 59 years old. Today is Wednesday, May 12th, 2021 recording from the Chicagoland area. My conversation is with Dr. Michael Shively, who is my brother, my colleagues, and my friend.

00:21 Hello, my name is Michael Shively. I'm 59 years old also and I'm speaking today. On Wednesday, May 12th, 2021 with my sister separated at Birth on Marian Hatcher and I'm talking from Washington State at the moment.

00:43 Great. So Michael, I mean we know each other with known each other for years, but you know, there's things I don't know. So I guess the first thing I would really like to find out about you, is you know, what did you want to do? Or when you were young? You have me ask to do anything special?

01:07 Not at all. Nothing special, you know, I was pretty late in life before I started.

01:15 Thinking about bigger things. You know, when I was young I grew up in a very small town in the country and most people around me had never been to college and it was really just about finding a job and making enough money to get by and try and enjoy life a little bit. So I, I was from a town of 500 people and back in the 60s and 70s grew up there. And I really wasn't thinking about very much at all and it was really and I had some formative experiences that I now, understand help to get me to do what I do now and what I have been doing for four thirty years, but you know what, the time I really didn't understand the role of events would would play. But my my dream job to tell you the truth was to work on boats to work on tugboats Freighters of the Washington State ferry system.

02:15 You know, back is back at that time. There was very high unemployment and lot of competition. So it's sort of like I couldn't find a job. So I went to college instead. So who knows? Who knows what life would have looked like if there had been job opportunities on a tugboat?

02:33 And it's so funny. Give me an example of some of those experiences that shaped informed today is Michael Shively.

02:43 Well, yeah, I was cruising along like most people. Just going to high school and having a part-time job in France, and during my formative years, my late later teen years, things started happening that now, I now understand her way too, and half an all the time, which is, you know, right when I'm developing, my own ideas about dating and girls, boys relationships and all those things, some of the women young women, high school girls. We would have said it's time, you know, I found out that someone had forced them to to do things, you know, to dating situations guys just wouldn't say no and you know back then we didn't have the same vocabulary that we would use now, but what I was hearing was a date, right?

03:38 And when you can, we didn't call it that in the small town in the 70s, but that's exactly what it was. And, you know, saw this other sixteen-year-old person is a friend of mine. That was a girl. I found out after some time to some guy done that to her and it was shocking. It didn't. I didn't think I was going to devote my life to that kind of thing, but then another story happened in another story happened in the one that really stuck with me. They just made me understand. There was something far bigger than just these random bad things happening. Was there was one of them. I worked in a little restaurant and gannets out in the country was the only restaurant in town and I was young high-school kid with a job and I was a cook in this restaurant and there were servers and bus people and you know, they were girls my age.

04:34 And one day I went into work and I found out about something that happened the night before. So this young woman that I worked with just couple years, older think she was 18. She was driving home. And yes, no streetlights. No carbs. No sidewalks. No nothing. It's just a long rose with nothing on them. And there was a guy flagged her down like you needed help. So she stopped like you do in the country and the guy eventually, long story short, he raped her.

05:11 And then he took all of her clothes and her car and left her on the road naked. And it was in a couple miles from, for much of anything, know where she lived was close to me. And what I found out happened is that she was trying to figure out which driveway was mine because she knew me and she thought I would help her.

05:36 And it is still gives me chills still but you know just to think that she was that vulnerable and that one did not and she was actually looking for me to help and I course, didn't know it. You know, I was sleeping away. And you know, I just wished I could have, you know, I just really wish I could have been there and knew it and it could have done something that image. You know, it's really that image of her out there and you know, like 45 degree Misty weather on piano on that sort of state and now it just really got to me. So

06:15 And then the stories kept,, you know, I went into college and then you start getting to know people and you hear of things that happen at the moment or people start talking about things that happened in the past and it's a time. It was the early 1980s when I was out doing my school work and that was really when domestic violence intimate partner violence, the idea of marital rape changing laws, about intimate, partner violence, and all those things are real Front Burner issues and a lot of masses, beneficial programs, Collins against women, act. Types of programs were really in the news all the time and it was a hot issue and then it just really connected to all these, you know, experiences in these kind of first-person accounts, I knew about. So when I was going through college, I always gravitated to those kinds of things when I had term paper option, so,

07:10 I wrote my Master's thesis on it. I did my dissertation on it in.

07:14 Throughout I kind of chose a path that really wasn't as well-traveled, which is, it wasn't, it was really looking at what I figured was the real source, and the real cause of the problem, which wasn't, it wasn't. Someone not having a rape whistle. It wasn't someone like being careless and walking at the wrong place at the wrong time. It wasn't that like, these young women had poor self-esteem, wasn't any of those things. The only reason any of this was happening was because of the guys there were that we're doing that in there was some really strong feminist voices that I listen to Back Then which were saying, you know me like Susan brownmiller that was saying, you know rape is nothing but a process by which all men keep all women in a state of fear.

08:05 And you know, the burden off and is put on them to just behave differently. Don't go there. Don't do that and maybe you can avoid trouble, always looked at the man. So, my, my college projects and my dissertation. It was like the attitudes of college man called boys. And to this day. Now, and I'm looking at the demand for commercial sex and how that drive sex trafficking in a lot of other problems. So, I can drop pretty straight line back to these teenage High School experiences. And what I learned from you. Now, I would say I would buy new survivors my life. I mean, I probably was in my forties before I could ever say that way. I would have thought about it that way, you know, it's at the time it was just my friends and horrible things that happened. But

08:56 There's a direct line. I can really Trace. Why? Why I do? What I do to those things.

09:03 So you've always made me really sounds like you've been able to try that, draw that direct line from the Continuum of sexual assault, you know, whatever you want to call it date rape, you know, intimate partner violence as you so eloquently, put it in Connect the Dots to the root cause which is a male wanting to exercise power control over a female. But historically that female has been the one who sold depressed different. Don't go to certain places will be out late at night, things like that. So this is something that I never knew it is just really interested. So, how does that

09:50 Antioch, dentist. And you did you just get a lot of writing about it. How does that turn into your career Daft Associates? And the researching that Ethan will let you know. I started college criminal justice, Northeastern University after I got my degree. I got my first professional job in the field there, and I just continue to, to choose my topics, you know, so my topics were these topics and I started publishing some things and interest. And then when I decided to leave Academia and go to a research firm, the the reason was it was really hard to really roll up your sleeves and really devout yourself to research while also teaching doing committee work and all that other people do it, obviously, but I really wanted to kind of get my hands dirty immersed in trying to find

10:50 Answers to things and I love teaching but I thought I was going to go back to it. You know, I thought it was going to go for 5 years. Get a couple Grand sand, do some big heavy lifting studies. Where are? That's all I thought about was researching and then I would go back to teaching and and disseminating us for the stuff that I had learned an end up being almost 20 years should Apso sheets. And I did many, you don't work on many grams. Do you know, a lot of them that I brought in as the lead and a lot of ones that were just, you know, part of the work that the other people were doing it. Most of it was funded by the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the US Department of Justice and a little bit of work for the state department a little bit for a couple foundations, but for the most part it was federal grants.

11:42 And I think it was in 2003. The first one I worked on in this line of work was a survey of state and local law enforcement agencies and asking them about whether they knew about a lot of transnational, organized crime that was going on at even at the local level. So a small town with, you know, 20 cops for all shifts and you know a few thousand people in a serving them as well as a big cities and what we found it really wasn't focused only on human trafficking at but it was focused on human trafficking in the finest, kind of rock my world, a bit on that. We found that even before most people use the words human trafficking or sex trafficking, you know, it's only a couple years after the federal law created that as a, as an actual type of crime in the country.

12:39 We sound like a over 25% of all of these jurisdictions said, oh, yeah, we have that here, including very small towns. And that's before there was a whole lot of understanding of what we were talking and then you know, I got to another thing that followed up after that was to evaluate that John School Prague program in San Francisco. The first kind of prostitution program that was designed to educate men about the harms of buying sex and so was arrested by us wanted that programming and we found some astonishing positive benefits, you know, positive results of the program that went far beyond anything. I would have expected and I really didn't understand why it has such a profound effect. I I figured it out later and we eliminated other things but it really seems that this education program could really impacts like almost half the men to some extent.

13:39 And that's just one day talking at them sort of exercise. So, you know, throughout I've stopped doing that line of work. I followed that up with an was sort of a instead of spending three years studying one program in one city. Just take a step back and see what, what's going on out there to try to deter buyers. You not deter sex buyers and, you know, different types of things. Not just education programs, but everything. So we created a typology. We spent three years gathering information and it was during the course of that study that I met you Marion. When I went to Chicago, to find out what the county and Chicago area was doing, cuz we picked Chicago, because we knew a lot was happening there and spend a lot of that you were actually involved in. I didn't know it before I went there, but that's what I learned there. And

14:33 So yeah, I ended up getting a real good read. Like maybe a mile wide and an inch deep is still ahead of It. Kind of a breath of what was going on throughout the country that dealt with exactly the the things I really cared about figuring out which as you know, why do men do what they do to hurt vulnerable. People generally and not just met cuz sometimes these things are facilitated by women and sometimes women do some of this exploitation. But for the most part, you know, the numbers are pretty overwhelming it for the most part is it's men, you know, committing the offences and it's it's mostly women. And when it's kids, you know, when it's minors or children, does a little more of an even split with the genders still, not remotely, even, but

15:26 Sunny White, you know, I spend this time kind of finding out what what are people doing about the demand side of commercial sex to try to deal with, just one type of these problems that are committed against women and children and vulnerable people and then provided an environment where it was possible to to get those sort of Grants to do that kind of work in the the staff and thus the expertise, you know, around me know we had some amazing statisticians that could, you know, I'm not, you know, I can do some, but again, I'm not like a high-end, mathematical statistician. But we had those kinds of people there. This particular, Ryan claim, you are pretty much of a genius when it comes to that. If we can't figure out a statistic that fits a situation, he would invent one.

16:21 You know, and people went to him to figure out how to figure things out. And so, you know, the other people. But, you know, people like that they just were, you know, they made it possible to do some of the, the work said that I wanted to do. So then I spent almost nineteen years there. Well, it was over 19. You

16:40 Well, I guess you mean you mentioned in their kind of where we met. I guess I would ask. So go back to that for a minute. And what did you think? When you I mean you met my boss Tara McDermott First is you and she was invited into the expert workgroup. But I think there's like 30 people that you had some and then you came to Chicago after that. And that's where we met. So, how to put a deck layout. I mean, how did that impact you and the work?

17:15 What what what ended up happening is the results of the evaluation of the San Francisco, John school program, got some attention and going to get on, wasn't me? It would be, and I didn't make those results. We just found those results. So, you know, the real star of the situation was the the people in there. This is Survivor LED program that basically ran it there and working real good cooperation with the police department and the District Attorney's Office in San Francisco, and they just created this amazing program number.

17:53 Oh, yeah, Autumn Bruce was there. So yeah, so, you know, it was the organization was going to call to Sage. It was the acronym for standing against Global exploitation, and it was one of the earlier, Survivor LED programs that focused on Commercial sexual exploitation, mostly women and girls. And even without that was, primarily would say it was about, was that, you know, but along the way, they like, most people come to the realization that, you know, you can rescue and rescue and help and fix and support all you want, and we obviously need to do that. We need to do more, we need to do better but no matter how well you're doing that, it's really just reacting and it's treating the symptoms of the problem and you're never going to stop the problem by just managing the outcomes, you know, that the symptoms. So, you know that they knew they had to do.

18:53 I'm about buyers and I can't tell you more than any other group of people. The ones that will say, if you don't deal with Buyers, you're never going to get it real grip on this. Just never really going to solve it or even have any kind of a lasting impact. Other than again just just patching up the wounds. So this program, your normal houghtaling who was a Survivor and you know, got out and got herself educated and committed her life to trying to deal with problem. And you know, she worked with a very smart and lightens nice cop with San Francisco police department. And they worked with on Kamala Harris, was the district attorney at the time in San Francisco and they collectively came up with this model where they would arrest the buyers, which they have been doing for decades. So that wasn't new. The new part is, once you've arrested them. What do you do with them?

19:52 And they decided to try to educate them. And so Sage was the lead on the class at selfie on the police obviously had to make the arrest the District Attorney's Office developed a process to screen and put men in the program that they had arrested. But once they got there, the lead was standing against Global exploitation. So it was Survivor LED Survivor founded, Survivor ran, and they were the ones that were doing the education and Autumn Burris was on the staff there. I think she was the number to person that's time and she eventually, you know, the, the founder passed away Norma and Autumn was seeing a deleted station for 4 years, so,

20:39 Yeah, she's a common friends of ours and she is definitely one of the Survivor leaders that, you know, it's just an amazing things in the in the country. But yeah, that program, you know, what they were able to accomplish is pretty, pretty amazing.

20:59 So deck that leads us into what was different about meeting me and you came to Chicago, what happened to me? And you ended up inviting me myself. Not just me, but also scary, and I too. So what was a critical launch and abolition back in May of 2010?

21:21 What would happen is, you know, we we basically pounded the pavement and work the phones and works the internet for that second Grand. At will the third one on this line of sexual exploitation human trafficking prostitution. So the first was a survey of law enforcement. It's like, wow, there's a lot more going on in and out of the way places and we never imagined. And the second one was well, this one city really created this amazing program to try to change the men that were creating the problem. And the third one is let's take a step back and just canvas the country and figure out what's going on out there. So if you know, what's not reinvent Wheels, let's shine a light on in the Basin and excellence and, you know, not, you know, let's learn from all this hard work. That is going on at the ground level. That really nobody knows about outside of each community. So

22:15 As we were doing that, we started finding a hundred, two hundred 500-800. We just kept finding more and more that was happening. And then it also you could kind of discern the areas that were further ahead or had done more or been doing it longer and on our short list of cities in the country word was sent Chicago.

22:40 You know, so we had some some Innovative stuff going on. That was actually using survivors to help on the prostitution operations of police were doing the women of power alumni. Am I getting that they might getting a president of the organization and doing a street operation and you're really focused on buyers. You obviously are also seeing survivors everywhere. So the idea was not to just like punish them or anyting but to try to get them out and give them at least a chance of getting hooked up with the services in trying to get a pathway out in the best people to reach them are fellow survivors, you know, and to try to, you know, understand

23:40 What really needs to happen an end to gain some trust, you know, like, you know, male cops that have been arresting them over and over aren't really the ideal vehicle to try to fix it. This time. We're here to help you with other times. You know, I threw you in the back of the cruiser and we three in jail, but so, do you know that? That was really interesting. And and the other thing is that, you know, there was a private organizations that case, you know, the Coalition against sexual exploitation, was kind of picking up some of the ideas from Sage on San Francisco and pushing them in different directions. And, you know, trying to trying to create some more attention on the demand side of things just like you were interested in doing it in your box interested in Cook County.

24:37 So, you know, there was Atlanta had done some really amazing Public high-visibility public Outreach to try to like, get everyone understand that, the buyers need to be dealt with on San Francisco. Had the John school program in a lot of other things, connected to it. But, you know, should I cook County, Illinois on the short list at the time, you know, this is the mid-late 2000s that really stood out as having a lot going on and it was worth taking them as one of 22 places that we actually travel to, you know, I'm out of all the well, I guess my question to you would be

25:20 Were you surprised that they had a Survivor working for law enforcement, who had been in custody at one point facing prison time? And Will Not only was I a Survivor leader. But I also was the executive assistant to the the Cherry who you admit it and I J. I mean, your skill set and personality and commitment. In your, your history, your own story where such that you're, you're perfect to do what you did and what the surprising part is, you know, that they would recognize the need to have those things even dawn.

26:02 And then that they would have the, I do what you want to call it at. I think it's just

26:09 Clear-eyed.

26:12 This trip was thinking a right. That's about how to you know, what? You need to move forward. So we have less than 20. Yeah, we have less than 20 minutes. So just make me. I'll make a note.

26:34 Yeah, just kind of morphing from the fact that they've got it and they did get it. You know, I mean not only did they, you know, first have myself and Lisa Cunningham and eventually when I was promoted the first time Brenda myers-powell, come on, but to move me into a trusted position to be, you know, that close to the executive director of program that I would have once been handcuffed and Shackled In but to utilize that experience. But also my

27:09 Education, skillset blah, blah blah, to really come up with a model that had yet have never and still doesn't exist anywhere else and turn it on. Turn the way we did it right now. I'm so what does that mean? Once you got we we went to the Minneapolis never like 70 people from all over the world because you got us on the list to be invited and then

27:36 What happened after that that you think was pivotal being able to have a real impact on your work and you're leaving to like the demand for that net website, stuff like that. I ended up being at the right place at the right time and meeting the right people and you didn't happen by accident, but I certainly didn't give this wasn't a plan. You know, it wasn't like I foresaw what I was going to learn exactly or what cuz I was going to meet and and how it would play out. But one thing was really obvious in an end. You guys just fit in this concept. It was really obvious. That there was Excellence out there. There was an innovation out there. There was

28:26 You're not getting it thinking right and being committed and passionate and in looking for answers, you know, understanding that doing the same thing, the same way that obviously is not working, is not going to cut it, just got to be another way in a different way, better way. And we need to look for it. So we'll will your unique and the the situation they created. It's not at all rare unique to have a Survivor leaned on, in some way by law enforcement in a, in a partnership. I mean, it's it's much more common than that. I think a lot of people realize, you know, the good cops and there are good cops everywhere, you know where we talk a lot right now in the moment about where things go wrong and it's all legitimate and it all needs to be worked out. But what can kind of get lost in? That is just how many people are doing the right thing the right way and just really working, you know to to make things better.

29:26 Even even among police believe it or not. So, you know that they often develop Partnerships. Like what was really rare? Is it?

29:36 They actually hired you, you know, they hired someone like you and not only me, they hired there were three of us on staff at one time, even though I moved into, I mean, I did that stuff. But also, you know, a whole bunch of other stuff, including the grant writing and, you know, just a whole lot of stuff, but there was three survivors like that at one time working for the sheriff's office. So yeah, they really got the other thing, you know, so

30:15 I have from the grunt work. I done, I knew a lot about what, what, what other people are doing, what other cities and counties throughout the country. I knew what, what was going on out there, you know, I didn't know anyone location nearly, as well as any, you know, like the locals always knew that plays way better than I ever could. But the thing that I brought to the locals when I did go visit a friend and do the sort of work was, hey, you know, they're there are five different ways to doing that thing. So you've tried these two and you struggle, but how about these other ones that seem to work in Waco Texas or this evening to work in Minneapolis, you know, so and so I was able to just basically put things in front of people like options.

31:01 And the thing that you guys did probably better than anyone. Well, not probably better than any of the people I encountered at. These other cities was follow through with that actually do things. So it was after these meetings in this discussion is like it certainly wasn't my idea to develop the national day of John's arrest that was yours and you guys decided let's bring some visibility some your light and heat, and try to build some momentum here by creating a coordinated effort that you could point to and publicized. And in let other people see, now, you can do this, you can go arrest buyers and it can be a very important thing to do and you know, I mean you asked me what sort of data it would click, you ask me questions. That was your initiative, but

31:53 And then when we got demand for on that website together to basically put the results of all this work, you know how to say. Well, here's what's going on and all these different places, you know, you actually followed through on an idea to 2-2 pitch in and actually contribute information to us. So you've had your team go and and find out about all the laws that were used to to make this arrest with the buyers. And you know, the charges that they could be, you know, it was so, you know, you guys had follow through, there was a commitment from the office and then, you know, you get lucky just because some people have the drive and the the skills.

32:36 To act on the opportunity which which is what you did and and, you know, getting people like you and Terry at the tables just solid gold, right, you know, which is the publisher of dark. I mean, I was hired on your previous Sheriff, but I will as a contraction play but I was under Sheriff. Dark made a full Fletcher's. I was Employee promoted. I've lost track of how many times I was promoted. But I think the thing that that that that really makes such a difference here as we had Buy in at the highest level. The second largest sheriff's office in the country's largest single-site jail in the country and I was

33:22 I was given the authority to execute a lot of stuff on behalf of the sheriff in Cook County and who nobody knew who I was just a name and number in our database with people that have been incarcerated until Sheriff, as they Dart in Cook County, Illinois said he believed in what he says. Nobody said he believed in her butt face and he believed in that. This is a demand for business model, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, and one of the things I think what that was important was that became important for me was I was supposed to go, find resources and resources that came to me from your initial introduction from you. Do through Cherry the resources. They changed me from that introduction being at the demand Evolution Lawrence.

34:19 Are mind-boggling because, you know, that open the door to legislators.

34:27 Give me lamb purposed. Do you know, nonprofits that were invested in? This is amazing. And it all started with that invitation. But you meeting Terry. And then, you know, the rest as they say is history, the nasul Johnson Russian initiative. Whoever would have thought that. After 19 operations. We would have arrested ten thousand fires in over a hundred and fifty jurisdiction. And would like, 27 28 States. I mean, it's crazy.

35:06 Yet the thing, that's the thing that's happened that has few things that are different than they were, you know, 10-15 years ago, but one of them and you guys were involved. And that's one of the things that has emerged is the different, a sophisticated use of technology to try on the good side of this problem. You're not trying to solve all the problems. We all know, a lot about how technology is used to exploit people, on to groom victims to, to access victims to facilitate the commercial sex trade as a business, you know, so, I mean, obviously there's a lot of ways this Mist use, but there have been some amazing, you know, Innovative smart, you know, people that have just developed technology that can attend screen. The noise that's out there, you know, it, whether it's web searches whether it's postings on ads sites, whether it's Social Media Chat.

36:06 Her basically comb through the massive amount of communications and using artificial intelligence, identify things that look like they may be sex trafficking, that may be a commercial sex. They can calibrate it. So it focuses more on trying to identify the events or identify victims or identify buyers.

36:30 And they can hook up police departments with alerts. So this automations is kind of grinding away. And then when it hits certain marks on alert and go to police say, hey, it looks like these ads are selling the same person and we seeing the same photos and we're seeing the same computer, ID number and we're seeing the same telephone number cell phone numbers on multiple ads that are using Code words. That we know on the streets are probably miners like fresh or new in town, or barely legal or seeing all those sorts of things. So, this automation is efficient and effective, and it can be used to push proactively just deterrence messages like you, no surprise by or this is not actually your next victim that you're talking to, but this is a group or the sheriff's department, or the police department. And what you do is really horrible as dangerous as harmful to you. It's dangerous for you is

37:30 Most everyone else blah, blah blah. So that's sort of new technology is is you know, we had a 12 different tactics typology that we developed back, you know, 10 years ago, and now we need to add something or the process of doing the work right now to do that, but that technology so child-safe a I was developed and Rob spec develops that and he worked with you to hook up police departments that were also participate in the National, John suppression initiative. So these things like I think I'm

38:08 One of those little cliche as that works. For me. Resonates for me, personally, is the universe rallies around clear intent, and when you grind grind, grind and you're committed to doing something. Then opportunity South Bend and then connections, get made, and then situations arise that allow you to move forward. And, you know, you help me move forward with the work I was doing. And then I was able to help you move forward of work. You were doing, and then years go by and you do all kinds of things that have nothing to do with me directly, but then you get hooked up, you get hooked up with Rob Spector. This is just a stark raving genius and a very wonderful person and he's committed to doing this to. And he happens not to be a cop or a Survivor or a pinhead researcher. What are you making this problem? Stop? So and then he gets hooked up with you. I didn't have them.

39:09 I guess what, though? You know why? I'm at how I met her. Let me just to tell you real quick. I met him because, you know, because of national operation, you know, I've no police like in all those places, right? And I got the opportunity to go to NYPD and he happened to be. He was he was a child safe platform. I was in my PD was there. They had him because they felt like, you know, they treated me like that. You know how I walked on water or something with the work that we did. Cuz we actually the first time we use artificial intelligence. It was the Seattle against slavery. Rob Biser tool and I met Rob Spector there. And you know, you know, the rest is history because you know, they were doing such great at NYPD, but why not invite him to utilize the national sting operation and

40:09 It worked out really, really well. So I see you know, we have a little bit more time would I will wonder if we would like to ask you before we move move on to more current work. That, you know, that's so awesome. Is there. One thing when I know this is really hard, you going to shoot me for it, but there were one thing that came out of the national John, the president assured of that mattered, that made the difference, nationally. What would it be?

40:44 Well.

40:47 One thing, okay. You're really talks to me in there on the one thing, but

40:53 Okay, I was one or two one. That one thing is to basically leverage. You know, it, the kind of the stroke of Genius is leveraging, what capacities already exists in the tools that are already there, but to leverage collaboration in a way that brings attention to the issue and that can unlock more resources and more political will and more public will to keep doing more. So, you know, that there have been reversed things going on throughout the country since the 1960's in different places. And then you know, sometimes tens of thousands of men over the years have been arrested in places like Detroit and San Francisco. And you know even smaller

41:44 But you know, it isn't like that was new or anything, but no one would ever try to coordinate them. You know, they've coordinated other things like, you know, child sex, offending things, you know, and you know that the international slavery though, you know, all kinds of other things but the common sex by the Sea, one of the big problems in this whole field is that it? It's just a cruel twist that has to do with how crimes get classified.

42:13 And simple prostitution is classified as a low-level misdemeanor. In, you know, you're you're committing a more serious crime. If you have a joint in your pocket, you know, then if you buy sex from someone, so it's really hard to get a lot of money or grants for attention or, you know, a multi-state task forces and, you know, Federal initiatives. You don't really get those for simple Street, prostitution in the word localized prostitution, unless his child sex trafficking. So,

42:45 You know, that the thing I was kind of brilliant about what you did was you created almost like the impression that there was some big National initiative that will you know, but it was all voluntary all collaborative. I mean, you poured your sweat into making it happen, but you know, it isn't like the feds were behind it. With some big Grant where the trained everyone is sent everyone out to do it like they do with a lot of other things. So this is really homegrown Grassroots bottom-up thinking and leveraging what the law to do it the way they are already doing it. That's also brilliant. It seemed simple. And in a way, it seems obvious, but you would not believe all you, you would. But a lot of people would not believe how often people mess that they get directive, they decide will the only way to do it the way, I think you should do it and then they don't understand the million different ways. Things are different at the local level and all that. So

43:46 You know, it really was brilliant to say look for coordinating it, but you do your thing, your way. But, you know, you could do this anytime. There's a lot of times, but why don't you do it this week or two weeks. And why don't you collaborate with his money? You tell us what happened? What are you tell us? How many fine Zagat? How many guys actually spent the night in jail, you know, whether you seized any of the vehicles at the buyers use and we're going to compile and what other crimes, what other crimes occurred, extensive criminal history for the most part like they do when you arrest someone that like multiple liquor store.

44:23 You know, they do, they often, you know, a lot of these guys are carrying weapons, a lot of McCarran drug. Some of them use drugs, to try to leverage the whole sexual Commerce. You know, I'm a lot of other things going on. A lot of these guys are sex offenders on that are on the registered sometimes are on probation. Sometimes they have warrants for other things, you know, and often sometimes they brought their children with them. That's actually not very rare either. There been plenty of times but one of my horror stories that I knew know about is the guy was driving a bus with special needs preschoolers and he bought a woman to come in and perform sex acts on them. With all those kids sitting in the bus and then, you know, there's a million things wrong with the whole scenario, but

45:14 The yeah, it was, you know, there's so many stories. Do you know, infants and in car seats will people are, you know, engaged in this Behavior, but I see no, just pulling all the information about what they they can do and have capacity to do, and will do periodically. But you try to coordinate it and leverage that to bring attention to it. And these initiatives, you know, crate headlines, national press and then it kind of encouraged other wants to do at any of the. Another thing that was pretty clever, was, you know, that there's a lot of misinformation and a kind of overheated rhetoric about Super Bowls and what happens? But one thing's clear that there is an object in commercial sex around any big event, but the Super Bowl is one of them and you guys coordinated it. One of the two times of the year that these operations tended to happen was around Super Bowl.

46:11 And so this is a natural of uptick in interest about these things in that ditch. It wasn't part of this initiative, but I'm sure that you guys helped them to think about doing it. So this last year, in Hillsborough County, Pinellas County around Tampa, where the last Super Bowl was the arrested over a hundred buyers locally, and it was around the Super Bowl was in the weeks leading up to it. So, you know, there's there's lasting effects even if they're not necessarily counting it as part of the national initiative on even if you're not behind the curtain, pulling the levers and in telling people to, you know, give me your data. If it's it's still having a has 8 minutes or so. I was just thinking that you know, the I coordinated stings 1 through 18 and then I've been on medical leave. Stick 19 was sustainable without me which is

47:10 Important about this work. I might have taken six people to execute what I have cuz I you know, it was second nature to me because I never slept in. I just was in, you know, immersed in all of it, but it was if they never did another one again, they accomplish what they compliment or we accomplished going to have to share the Cook County without it would never happen but it is a model that others might tweak it. And I just have to say this of the whole idea of asking people to do what they could was because of at the Lawrence. One thing. I'll never forget Sewanee on saying that's just wanting on saying if you could just do 5% you don't have to do the whole thing. But if you could just do 5% or whatever you're able to do and bring all of that, we brought back together and literally that's what happened. Some people could go out and you know, larger, you know, jurisdictions could arrest a hundred by

48:10 Only arrested one. Okay, you know, and that was fine. They got just as much Free Press out of it, which is important because we actually helped some Vice units from being disbanded by bring attention to the issue in our last stuff, 5 6, 7 minutes. You know what next? I mean what that's one of the things that we got to do together, but you've done so much outside of me and, you know, and you have so many other partners. What what do you want to leave us within these last few minutes, whether there's you know where we have a recurring Grant. Now, I'm in the National Center on sexual exploitation and it's based in Washington DC and it's an advocacy group. So but I'm still doing the same type of thing. I'm still a researcher and the research is for a purpose. It's not just to write Journal articles and say I'm, you know, know something it's really might, my whole objective is

49:10 And to put information in the hands of people that can use it and we'll do something about it, which is again while you and I were hit it off and of work together because you want to do something and you want information. So I've got information and I want people to use it and you want to do stuff and you want information. So it's a perfect match and you know, there's there's a need for better information. You know, there's how much sex trafficking is there. Is it overblown? Is it? Is it undercounted? You know, I mean, there's debates in the public space. I think, you know, one thing we haven't said, which because you and me, it's, it's the Assumption. That's what the whole conversations are based on the assumption that you have to deal with the man that consumer-level demand, if you're going to impact a prostitution and Commercial sex.

50:02 Because the supply side and distribution types of tactics, they they can be temporary temporarily factor that can kind of dress prom for little bit move somewhere else. They don't solve it and the consumer demand is the revenue that drives all of sex trafficking. And all the prostitution. You don't have victims. If you don't have a market in the market is driven by the buyers and every dollar that is ever motivated, someone to find a victim to traffic, someone to sexually exploit someone every single dollar that motivated. It came from the wallet of a buyer. So, you know, it's necessary. It's the root cause the primary prevention of sex trafficking means dealing with the buyers and trying to get them to stop by. So

50:57 The the what's next? For me right now is I'm trying to fight back. What I am convinced is the biggest threat to being able to proceed with this, which is the movement to try to fully decriminalized prostitution. And there are some, you know, if you're not immersed in the issues and if you're, you know, if you're just kind of a regular person who doesn't really have a dog in the fight and you just kind of, maybe just don't know much about it. The arguments there making, but things would be better and safer for survivors. If it were brought out of the shadows and made legal or safe or regular all those arguments. They sound pretty reasonable and a lot of pretty decent. Reasonable people believe them, but they're not true and they're not even close to true. The real fully decriminalized in prostitution is exactly the policy that every single pimp and every single sex trafficker and every single buyer.

51:57 And the buyers are the people who do the most of using and beating up and assaulting of survivors. You ask them. What what policy would allow you the greatest latitude to keep doing this, which which, which legal environment. Do you wish you lived in? They would say off by all means fully decriminalized prostitution. Don't Legalize and regulate it cuz that creates boundary. I don't want that. So that that is the fight. I think the fight right now is said, we know enough to know that. If you want prostitution sex trafficking to go away, you have to suppress demand. You have to eliminate demand. And then the problem is the biggest threat to that is the belief that it's not even a problem to begin with, you know, that is the best way to handle the problems that are associated with prostitution is to decriminalize it and then the kind of Black Market forces and the

52:57 Bad things that happened was some police, you know, on the way, the abused the situation, you know, the assumption is that all of those things will improve for go away. If we just took the, the law out of the equation and nothing could be further from the truth. It's been tried, it's failed and and there is a lot of momentum on their side and I'm really sharing that we're getting a Tipping Point where prostitution is lumped together with marijuana and in then they're they're basically mutating morphing abusing some of the concepts that are legitimate in, you know, trying to reduce the incarceration rates and try to stop abusive policing and communities of color, you know, there's all these things that there's very little conversation since there's truth to what the main conversation is, but these Pro sex work,

53:51 Cartels basically have taken that language and saying you know, what, a great way to get racial Equity or victim or survivors rights are human rights for survivors. You know, where oral sex workers is to fully decriminalized. Well, it sounds good unless you know, better and it's very false and it's been tried. It's spelled the sex trafficking and Commercial sex, markets explode and no one's watching them and be there. So I think that and I think you and that's why you're my brother sister.