Investigating a child sex trafficking case while recognizing the need for advocacy throughout the process can be a challenge both for law enforcement and for advocates. Explore the different perspectives each bring to their contacts with victims. Identify 5 core values of partnership which will enable you to have a successful and productive team as you serve the most vulnerable of victims. Examine a victim’s perspective of a law enforcement-led advocacy team and hear how it impacted her life.

Law Enforcement Officers and Telecommunicators are AMBER Alert First Responders during the critical initial stage of a child abduction. This webinar will review the criteria for an AMBER Alert and identify tools and resources which enhance first responder capabilities in cases of endangered missing and abducted children, with detailed considerations for those where AMBER Alerts are issued.

One of the most important and pivotal components of a child abduction response is the ability to effectively manage information during an incident. Learn the importance of using a leads management system and provide guidance regarding the implementation, organization, and dissemination of leads using various systems.

AMBER Alert Essentials for Community Members will enable members of the public to recognize the history and essential components of the AMBER Alert Program. The criteria for an AMBER Alert will be examined as well as how to support law enforcement efforts during an AMBER Alert activation.

How important it is that everyone working these cases understands roles and responsibilities? Discuss having a plan in place, ahead of time, to outline what will happen and who will do what -- and why that's important. Time is the enemy in these cases; a seamless initial intake with a clear understanding of what is needed will ultimately make the difference when seconds matter.

Through this second webinar of a 2-part webinar series on "Cultural Considerations when Working within Indian Country," you will gain a better understanding of tribal jurisdictions and its impact on investigations in Indian Country. Examine the history of tribal communities' and how cultural values can impact interactions when working with victims of exploitation. Review best practices to recognize, identify and assist high-risk children living on tribal lands.

Today when a child or adult goes missing, there are many digital avenues of follow-up that are necessary in a timely recovery. During this webinar, we will address follow-up items that are often time sensitive and crucial if the case becomes a long-term investigation. Learn how to follow-up on Internet activity, social media accounts, device usage, application data, important “usage” on cell phones or tablets and more.

Examine effective strategies and best practices for the reinvestigation of cold and historical child homicides, unidentified human remains and long-term missing children investigations when there is no body. This webinar illustrates how children can be the perfect victim, and as such, how their cases can become historical and unresolved. Investigative strategies for establishing that a crime has been committed, identifying those responsible for the crime, and for proving or disproving facts and circumstances in the original unresolved investigation will be discussed. Learn how an MDT response can result in a successful resolution.

When working on missing and exploited children’s cases within Indian Country, it is important to value the differences, understand and adapt to the culture, and recognize that various dynamics exist. Through this webinar, you will obtain a better understanding of the tribal community and its system of shared values, beliefs, and rituals that are learned and passed on through generations. You will also gather best practices and examples to reduce barriers and increase trust when working on missing and exploited children’s cases on tribal lands.

AMBER Alerts are activated in the most serious child-abduction cases. The goal of an AMBER Alert is to instantly galvanize the community to assist in the search for and safe recovery of a missing child. These alerts are broadcast through radio, TV, road signs, cellphones, and other data-enabled devices. During this webinar, tribal community members consider law enforcement's response to missing and abducted children, and when an AMBER Alert is an effective tool. The importance of bridging the gap between law enforcement and the community is discussed, as are ways community members can assist during and before a missing or abducted child situation.

Improve response and recovery for endangered missing, child abduction and exploitation investigations during disasters and emergencies. Through case studies, review past disasters to explore and develop response strategies for protecting children during periods of restricted movement, social distancing or shelter in place.

Explore how to take the CART concept and bring it to life in your department. Is there a standard template for gaining acceptance from stakeholders? Does my department need CART? Is it feasible? What if my CART doesn’t look like other programs? This webinar will address these questions and provide clarity on how to form an effective CART tailored to the specific needs of the agency/jurisdiction/region it serves.

Examine resources that are crucial to implement during a missing child incident. Hear about the importance of accumulating these resources before a call comes in for a missing or abducted child. The successful recovery of a missing or abducted child is dependent on organization and team work. Understand at the end of this webinar, how important a Child Abduction Response Team is in these high priority, time sensitive cases.

The AMBER Alert Best Practices – Law Enforcement Field Guide is a companion to the AMBER Alert Best Practices Guide and is aimed at law enforcement agencies and first responders. It is designed to provide administrators with a document on what to expect in the event of an endangered missing or abducted child investigation, as well as provide their personnel with a reference manual to help jump start an effective response and investigation. The webinar focuses on raising awareness of areas that are consistently shown to be relevant and have an operational impact in these types of cases as well as how the guide can assist.

This webinar provides law enforcement and service providers with information on how technology (cell phones, phone chat lines, social networking sites, and internet advertisements) are used to seduce, lure, and control child victims of sex trafficking.  The presenter discusses how to develop successful investigative techniques to proactively identify and locate child victims and corroborate the technology facilitated commercial sexual exploitation investigation.  Case studies are used to facilitate the discussion. Pitfalls and challenges to these investigations are also discussed to help agencies identify them within their strategies and approaches to combating this crime.

Explore the importance of an immediate search and canvass when a child goes missing. Statistics show that the quicker responders can organize a search and canvass, the more likely that the child will be recovered. In addition, this webinar will examine the most effective search and canvass strategies. Demonstrate examples of actual cases, which will compare and contrast an effective versus a flawed response where search and canvass was utilized.

Learn how a team approach to investigations allows all members of a multidisciplinary team to work together to investigate cases involving child sex trafficking, and to gather the evidence necessary to make a successful case. The presenter will discuss charging decisions, trial preparation, accomplice testimony, defense strategies, and witness preparation.

Criminal records of sex trafficking victims are known barriers to exiting sex trafficking situations. The link between committing crime while being a victim of sex trafficking, called forced criminality, has received little research attention. One aspect of forced criminality in sex trafficking situations includes ‘trick rolls’ which are the robberies of sex buyers. With the purpose of exploring forced criminality, this study examined 467 trick roll cases which are robberies conducted in a prostitution situation perpetrated by the sex seller, during one year in Las Vegas, Nevada. Using crime databases and working knowledge of the LVMPD Vice and Sex Trafficking Investigations Unit, 36 percent of the identified suspects in the trick roll cases were found to be known victims of sex trafficking. Trick roll cases involving sex trafficking victims were found to be more likely to involve multiple suspects (including their sex trafficker), begin at a bar/club or casino floor, involve the theft of more valuable items, more likely involve a weapon, and more likely to involve the injury of the sex buyer.

Prosecuting sex trafficking of minor cases is difficult, in part because victims are unstable. Join us for this webinar to discuss building an investigation that allows the prosecutor to go to trial, even if the victim is unable to testify.

The purpose of this webinar is to present the findings of Part II of a series of studies on sex trafficking in Hawaii. This study explores the experiences of 22 victims of sex trafficking in Hawaii. Information presented will include their experiences of childhood maltreatment, recruitment into sex trafficking, violence, sex buyers, descriptions of the sex traffickers, and the structural barriers to providing necessary prevention and intervention to victims of sex trafficking in Hawaii.