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Arkansas leaders attend human trafficking summit

The Arkansas Attorney General's Office is bringing our state's human trafficking issue to the forefront by hosting a two-day summit to raise awareness.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The Arkansas Attorney General's Office has been working to bring our state's human trafficking issue to the forefront. 

With a two-day summit happening on October 16th and 17th, state leaders are raising awareness about the problem.

The latest data from the national human trafficking hotline identified 74 human trafficking cases in Arkansas in 2021.

Attorney General Tim Griffin said this has been an ongoing problem and now he has launched a new partnership to fight it. 

"It's a problem everywhere in Arkansas, not just in the bigger cities, not just on the coast," Attorney General Tim Griffin explained.

It's something he doesn't want people to overlook. 

"If you see something, say something, but you got to know what you're looking for," Griffin added.

Nearly 1,500 people are attending the inaugural human trafficking summit at the Statehouse Convention Center and Griffin hopes they walk away with new knowledge and perspective. 

"We've got a lot of law enforcement here, we've got a lot of people who help victims of human trafficking. But we also have, a lot of Arkansans aren't professionally involved in combating it, but want to know more, and want to be able to recognize the sort of activities that could mean human trafficking is going on," he explained.

Governor Sarah Sanders said big changes are underway to better tackle the problem.

Some of those include a list of recommendations from a working group that would be specifically focused on human trafficking.

"Those include setting up a state police hub to combat human trafficking through centralized reporting, and clearly defined protocols, and a screening tool for private citizens and public officials to use to evaluate possible victims," Governor Sanders said.

The Arkansas Department of Public Safety and Department of Human Services also recently received a $1.5 million grant to support those changes and establish the Arkansas Human Trafficking Council. 

Griffin is also launching a statewide tactical operations partnership with a group of representatives of federal law enforcement and state police. 

"This is going to be a very tight group that will meet frequently to share information to make sure we are collaborating and cooperating to find the criminals that are engaged in human trafficking," he said.

The summit continues tomorrow and is open to the public. You can find more information by clicking here.

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