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Human Trafficking Unit

What is human trafficking?

Labor Trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery.

Sex Trafficking: the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, in which a commercial sex act is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person forced to perform such an act is under the age of 18 years.

  • Sex trafficking violates the personal liberty of another person with the intent to effect a violation of pimping or pandering.
  • Pimping is described as knowingly deriving financial support in whole or in part from the proceeds of prostitution.
  • Pandering is the act of persuading or procuring an individual to become a prostitute, or procuring or arranging for a person to work in a house of prostitution.

Commercial Sexual Exploitation of Children

The commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) is human trafficking and child sexual assault. It is a serious psychologically destructive crime that places its victims at great risk for situations such as murder, serious bodily injury, and intense lifelong medical conditions. Victims of sex trafficking face tremendous survival and recovery challenges. Sex trafficking is a profitable criminal enterprise and industry. Unlike selling drugs, buying and selling human beings, especially women and children, is a crime that can repeat itself multiple times.

No one system, agency, or individual is capable of stopping child sex trafficking alone. In order to successfully combat this national epidemic, agencies, as well as individuals, must create strategic partnerships to respond to the issue on all levels. The programs and protocols for approaching Human Trafficking in Yolo County are not exclusive to Yolo County, or even the state of California. An effective response to human trafficking can be created by leveraging existing resources and collaborating with dedicated partners in an effort to fully combat this epidemic.

Yolo County District Attorney’s Office Response to Sex Trafficking

In November 2012, California’s anti-human trafficking Proposition 35 was enacted in California with 81 percent of voters in favor of the legislation, to increase the penalty for human trafficking, particularly in cases involving the trafficking of minors.

The Yolo County District Attorney’s Office is dedicated to prosecuting perpetrators who sexually exploit and traffic women, men, and minors for financial gain, including pimps, panderers, and human traffickers. In order to successfully prosecute these perpetrators, the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office it dedicated to:

  • Holding perpetrators responsible for exploiting victims.
  •  Training and Collaborating with law enforcement on how to properly investigate sex trafficking, pandering, and pimping cases.
  • Providing training to the community–educators, students, the general public– to raise public awareness about domestic sex trafficking.
  • Being an active partner with all Yolo County Law Enforcement and community partners in combating human trafficking.

Yolo County Resources

Empower Yolo provides crisis intervention services for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and sex trafficking in Yolo County. Contact Empower Yolo at: 530-661-6336 or http://empoweryolo.org.

Yolo County Child Welfare Services serves children from Yolo County of all ethnic backgrounds and ages. Any child reported to the County who is suspected to be endangered by abuse, neglect or exploitation shall be eligible for initial intake and evaluation of risk services. The child abuse hotline number is 530-669-2345 or 1-888-400-0022.

Yolo County District Attorney’s Office human trafficking dedicated staff includes an assigned Deputy District Attorney and Investigator, and the staff at the Victim Services Program. To contact our office please call 530-666-8180 or district.attorney@yolocounty.org.

Yolo County Sheriff:  530-666-8282 or yolocountysheriffs@yolocounty.org.

Woodland Police Department:  530-666-2411

West Sacramento Police Department:  916-372-3375

Davis Police Department: 530-747-5400

Winters Police Department: 530-795-2261

National Resources

The National Human Trafficking Resource Center’s toll-free hotlines is 1-888-373-7888 to speak with specialists available from anywhere in the country, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

In case of an Emergency

In the event of an emergency involving potential human trafficking call 911.