Jan. 8—The Albuquerque Police Department says it arrested 40 people who were trying to pay for sex and 18 sex workers during multiple operations targeting human trafficking.
Of the 58 people arrested between July and December, none have been charged with human trafficking. At least a portion of the operations were done with undercover detectives posing as sex workers or those soliciting them.
During a news conference Wednesday, APD said 40 suspects were charged with patronizing prostitutes and 18 were charged with prostitution, both petty misdemeanors.
APD spokeswoman Franchesca Perdue said two sex workers were identified as human trafficking victims during the operations, which were done in July, September and October through December.
“Another goal of the operations is to gather information and begin identifying potential human trafficking victims and human traffickers,” Perdue said.
It is unclear if any suspected human traffickers were identified as a direct result of the operations.
Police Chief Harold Medina said for those who sell sex on the streets, there is more to the story than meets the eye.
Last week, a relative of a missing California teen told Albuquerque police she was in the city, and officers found the 14-year-old girl selling herself on East Central. The discovery led officers to arrest Roderick Norseweather and Tajahnae Johnson, who the teen alleged had brought her and another girl to Albuquerque for sex work.
Norseweather and Johnson, both of California, are charged with human trafficking in the case.
Hours before the APD news conference, the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office announced deputies charged a 21-year-old with promoting prostitution after sex workers were seen getting out of his car on East Central.
Jeremiah Draper told deputies he was paying the women for sex and the women told deputies the same story, with one identifying herself as “an independent sex worker with no male protector,” according to court records. Deputies said a phone number tied to Draper was used as a contact on an online ad selling sex and he had two phones, $1,400 in cash on him and high heels and condoms in his car.
Draper and the two women were from California.
Prosecutors filed a motion to keep Draper behind bars, accusing him of bringing the women to Albuquerque from California on Friday to do sex work. “This behavior is exploitative and predatory,” according to the motion.
BCSO spokeswoman Jayme Gonzales said the women were provided with “appropriate support resources.”
“This case remains active, with evidence still being processed, and we are actively coordinating with our federal partners for adoption at the federal level,” she said.
Both APD and BCSO said they would continue to target human trafficking.
Medina said there needs to be a layered approach to dealing with human trafficking — arresting suspects while offering resources to victims. He described it as a balancing act between showing compassion and having to enforce the law.
“We cannot allow this activity to take place on our streets,” Medina said in a statement. “We will continue operations and working with our partners to provide victims of these crimes the resources they so desperately need.”
The department works with local agencies such as the Rape Crisis Center of Central New Mexico and SANE, Albuquerque Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, to provide resources to potential victims of human trafficking and sex workers.
“It could be likened to domestic violence, in the sense of people asking, ‘Why didn’t they leave?’ Right? And it’s for so many reasons: They don’t have anywhere to go. It’s the only thing that they know,” SANE Executive Director Shannon Lowry said. “Sometimes a familiar hell is more comfortable than an unfamiliar unhell.”