On Sept. 20, you ran a front-page article about the sex trafficking of children called, \u201cSting highlights \u2018devastating\u2019 reality of human trafficking.\u201d (Why was devastating in quotations? But that doesn\u2019t even make my top three list of questions). I\u2019m sure that my reaction was shared by many in the valley \u2014 this kind of horrible thing is happening here? But the article left three huge unanswered questions for me:<\/p>\n
1. The police lament not doing the bust on Friday and Saturday. In fact, the subtitle of the article included this sad piece of news; \u201cCarbondale police chief says more would have been caught had operation included Saturday night.\u201d So, assuming the police could choose when to do their sting, why didn\u2019t they do it on Friday\/Saturday instead of the Thursday\/Friday?<\/p>\n
2. Catching the sick people who want to have forced sex with children (because surely, they haven\u2019t deceived themselves into thinking that a 13-year-old girl chose this line of work) is great, but there is absolutely no mention of trying to bring down the people supplying the girls. One can only assume that this is where the real change will happen.<\/p>\n
3. The most glaring omission to this article: The piece ends with this line, \u201cStryker also has prepared a tip sheet of signs of trafficking, and advice for what to do if someone sees something suspicious.\u201d So why not supply the public with this tip sheet? You\u2019ve brought attention to the problem, you\u2019ve said common people need to be armed with the information to spot this kind of thing in their community, so arm us. Publish Stryker\u2019s tip sheet so we know what to look for and can all do our part to stop this despicable behavior in our valley.<\/p>\n
Thanks for listening.<\/p>\n