Mayor’s Task Force on Anti-Human Trafficking Minutes

Wednesday, December 16, 2015  •  1:30 – 3:30 pm  •  City Hall, Room 305

1 Dr. Carlton B Goodlett Place, San Francisco, CA 94102

Attendees:

Tara Anderson, SFDA; Officer Riley Bandy, III,  SFPD; Patricia Barrigan, SFDA Victim Services, Mollie Brown, Huckleberry Youth Programs; Frances Byrne, Freedom House; Gena Castro-Rodriguez, SFDA Victim Services; Cristy Dieterich, DPH; Danielle Fluker, Adult Probation; Johanna Gendelman, FCS; Minouche Kandel, DOSW; Tatum King, Homeland Security; Jessica Li, SF SafeHouse; Alix Lutnick, RTI; Dr. Emily Murase, DOSW; Josh Pastreich, OLSE; Beverly Popek, OLSE; Officer Anthony Randolph,  SFPD; Angelina Romano,  SFUSD; Alana Rotti, DOSW; Lt. Ed Santos, San Francisco Police Dept.; Niki Severson, DOSW; Sarai Smith-Mazariegos, SHADE; Maria Tourtchaninova, DOSW;  Hediana Utarti,  Asian Women’s Shelter;

 

1. Welcome, Introductions/Check-In, Agenda Review (Dr. Emily Murase)


2. Agenda approved [Anderson/Santos]


3. Minutes from October 28, 2015 approved. [Gendelman/ Santos]


4. Presentation on First Offender Prostitution Program (Tara Anderson)

The First Offender Prostitution Program is a court diversion program that began as a collaborative between the District Attorney’s Office, SFPD and the non-profit SAGE. In the past year SAGE closed its doors and the District Attorney’s Office selected Community Works West to examine and enhance current curriculum. This was accomplished this past spring with the help of and experts from former SAGE. Community Works West is now piloting a new curriculum.

The curriculum has shifted from a lecture style towards a group style format aiming at group accountability. This is not an anti-human trafficking program, as not all prostitution is human trafficking. The program does aim to impact demand for purchasing sex in San Francisco. The program consists of an eight-hour session on a Saturday at the Hall of Justice 6-8 times per year.  The curriculum covers: local human trafficking, health education, and neighborhood impact (how street level sex sales impact community). Former survivors talk about their own experiences and Sex Addicts Anonymous participates and provides resources for the program.

When purchasers of sex are arrested, the standard punishment is participation in the diversion program as well as a $1000 fine. If the offender can demonstrate financial need, the fine may be income adjusted. The diversion program is not a court directed sanction. It is a pre-charge intervention, for people who are having their first contact with police. If offenders complete the program and avoid criminal contact for two years, the charge is dismissed.

On average, the program sees 8-16 participants per month, referred from one-two operations per month, with buyers coming from all walks of life.

5. Evaluation of Task Force (Alexandra Lutnick)

The Mayor’s Task Force as well as the North Bay Task Force will be participating in an evaluation to identify indicators and criteria of successful task force implementation and outcomes. The project is funded by a grant from the National Institute of Justice and is spearheaded by Alexandra Lutnick and Minh Dang. A team of human trafficking survivors have been hired as peer research staff to aid the project. The goal is to build a peer infrastructure on how task forces are looked at and what works well.

There will be a rapid appraisal method (looking back at meeting minutes, doing interviews with task force members, etc.) followed by the development of a feedback plan. After year one, there will be a preliminary report followed by a check-in three times a year.

The project proposal includes a $1000 per year in financial support, which will be split between the two task forces based on need. The project aims to start in January.

6. Update on No Traffick Ahead Campaign & Super Bowl Preparations (Minouche Kandel)

 

1. No Traffick Ahead Public Outreach Campaign

The advertisement campaign was finalized this week. The campaign theme focuses on the message that trafficking is happening here in the Bay Area across all industries with special attention paid to labor trafficking. Suzanne Boutillier donated the creative art work for the campaign.

A website, www.notraffickahead.org (listed on the ads), is currently being developed with information of how people can learn about trafficking and what they can do. It will also have training opportunities and a map that highlights businesses that have taken action to prevent trafficking within their business.

The ads were informed by two focus groups with survivors and the general public. The ads chose not to display imagery of a human trafficking victim as to not perpetuate the idea of what a victim should look like.

Distribution of Advertisements in San Francisco:

• 5 queen ads on MUNI busses;
• 500 car cards inside MUNI busses;
• 30 bus shelter ads;
• 15 on JC DeCaux public toilets;
• 3 mini billboards in SOMA and the Mission;
• Ads on Facebook and Google.

The locations of the ads are in areas with high visibility (Fisherman’s Wharf, Union Sq., Embarcadero). Two ads will be located within SuperBowl Fan City where an estimated 1-million people will be in attendance. The ads will go up during the third week of January and stay throughout the SuperBowl. The No Traffick Ahead website will go up at same time. The NFL agreed to give $20,000 to the No Traffick Ahead group to distribute materials at the Super Bowl stadium.

2. Human Trafficking Training

On-line Training

Global Freedom Center is currently developing an online human trafficking training, which will be hosted for free by Stanford University on their online education platform. The training will include three different tracks: general public, restaurant employees, and hotel employees. The training explains the chain of human trafficking that may occur in the various steps of a business. There are seven different segments that are three-five minutes each to encourage easy participation and viewing.

In Person Trainings:

• San Mateo County human trafficking training organized by Mike Brosnan (11/16/15), with an estimated 100 hotel industry personnel in attendance.
• San Francisco human trafficking training in October 2015 hosted by Hotel Council, SF Travel, Super Bowl host Committee and Golden Gate Restaurant Association with an estimated 40 hotel personnel in attendance;
• SFCAHT trained volunteers on hotel outreach on 11/22/15;
• South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking ran a media empowerment retreat for survivors to equip them on dealing with the media;
• In December, the CA Attorney General;s Office, US Attorney’s Office, and DOSW sponsored a labor trafficking training attended by over 100 including staff from Uber, Lyft, Adult Probation, SF Port, and BART employees.

3. 25 Cities/Counties Have Signed the No Traffick Ahead Resolution!

No Traffick Ahead is looking to do a press conference in January to announce the public ad campaign and the resolution.

4. Hotel Photograph Project and On-line Monitoring

Klass-Kids has started a hotel photography project. This entails getting the hotel’s permission to photograph their hotel rooms, which are then uploaded into a database. When online sex ads are posted, police can better identity the location of the victim based on the photograph of the hotel room.

7. Know the Chain Presentation (Killian Moote)

Know the Chain seeks to engage the private sector in addressing forced labor in their supply chains. It is a collaboration between Verité, Humanity United, Sustainalytics, and the Business & Human Rights Resource Center.

Today, labor trafficking creates 150 billion in profits globally and enslaves 21 to 35 million people.

Locally, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act requires companies to disclose what they are doing to address this issue. So far 2,600 companies have complied. Multinational companies have several more laws they also need to comply with such as the federal Business Supply Chain Transparency on Trafficking and Slavery Act of 2015. Most recently, the United Kingdom Modern Slavery Act, was passed also requiring companies to disclose how they are addressing this issue. The Act will impact over 12,000 companies that do business in the United Kingdom (such as Nike and Google).

Globally, there has been a normative shift among top executives, 71% of whom said that their company’s responsibility to eliminate slave labor extends further than just complying with current laws.

Know the Chain seeks to benchmark companies against one another in order to create a race to the top, incentivizing companies to go beyond current law requirements. In the past nine months, Know the Chain has been developing a framework to evaluate companies on their efforts to address human trafficking. This framework includes a grading system based on their:

1. Policies and Standards.
2. Integration (of policies into their business practice).
3. Impact and Risk Assessment
4. Monitoring (social auditing). Example: do companies physically validate that their contractors do not have slave labor or do they just take their word for it?
5. Remedy (what are companies doing to fix their wrong?). Example: After discovered slave labor in Malaysia, Apple reimbursed its workers, 1/3 of whom were in tech production, a total of 21 million dollars.

Know the Chain will begin by looking at the top 20-25 companies in the Industries of apparel/footwear, computer/tech, and food/beverage. The primary audience for this project are company investors. In the past ten years investors have demonstrated that they can have a huge impact on social responsibility. The first report will come out January 11, 2016 with aggregate data before benchmarking companies against each other to motivate them to make required changes. The actual benchmarked report is planned for next year.

8. Planning Ahead for 2016

• Massage parlor committee has expanded to include labor trafficking.
• The Department on the Status of Women will be releasing its 2015 San Francisco Human Trafficking report in 2016.
• Priority to focus on the shelter and housing Issue for trafficking survivors.