The police are not our allies in the fight against trafficking

The SPD is not our ally in fighting sex trafficking. Investigative journalists, funds for housing, healthcare, foster care, and education are our allies in the fight against human trafficking. But for short, let’s just call it Defund the Police.

On Friday July 31, the Seattle Times published an op-ed stating the “SPD is our ally in fighting sex trafficking”. As a survivor of child sex trafficking, I know that is not true. As a formerly homeless teenager whose taxes paid the salary of the police officer who beat me while I was sleeping, I know that is not true.

In a city whose officers spray our neighbors with chemical weapons banned in warfare by the Geneva Convention and continue performing sweeps on homeless camps in the midst of a pandemic killing thousands each week, I cannot call the Seattle Police Department an ally. Although King County moved 609 homeless people into hotels due to COVID as of May 1, the county’s 2019 homelessness count was 11,199 people. Homelessness and poverty are consistently cited as data points of vulnerability to trafficking. In a tech hub city with Seattle’s extreme economic disparity, it is obvious that trafficking is…