By Liz Doyle
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Howard County will be awarded over $1 million in federal grants over the next three years to help prevent human trafficking and increase support for survivors, county officials announced Wednesday.
The funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and its Office for Victims of Crime programs and will be allocated to the Department of Community Resources and Services as well as the Howard County Police Department, in partnership with HopeWorks of Howard County.
“We recognize that the best and most effective way to fight these forms of cruelty is to bring together a wide range of partners,” Robert K. Hur, the U.S attorney for Maryland, said in a news conference Wednesday. “Not just law enforcement, but also victim service providers, survivor advocates, community groups, pro bono attorneys, and private sector partners.”
Last year, the Howard County Police Department arrested 11 human traffickers and identified 27 victims, Howard County Executive Calvin Ball said in a news conference Wednesday. Three of these victims were juveniles.
“With this funding, we will be able to add an additional position to grow our human trafficking team,” Howard County Police Chief Lisa Myers said. “It will also allow us to enhance the training and equipment for all of our human trafficking detectives who focus on combating trafficking in our county. The grant will further enable those detectives to increase undercover operations targeting traffickers.”
HopeWorks of Howard County is a comprehensive service agency that supports those impacted by intimate partner violence, sexual violence and human trafficking in the county, Samantha Samuel-Nakka, the deputy director of services for HopeWorks, said in the news conference. Some of the services they provide are housing, counseling, advocacy and wellness workshops.
While the majority of HopeWorks’ clients are American-born women, there are some male victims and victims from out of the country, according to Andrea Nunez, a manager in the Howard County Office of Human Trafficking Prevention.
This money will fund HopeWorks’ anti-trafficking department by boosting its staff capacity to serve more trafficking clients. The money will also fund enhancements to HopeWorks’ data collection tool. For the first time, HopeWorks will have the funds to engage with survivor consultants. Finally, the Howard County Office of Human Trafficking Prevention will also be getting a new program assistant position, Nunez said.
“This opportunity will allow us to grow our anti-trafficking department, expand our survivor care programs, and strengthen our prevention efforts,” said Samuel-Nakka. “We’re so grateful for this opportunity to deepen our anti-trafficking efforts and to work alongside our partners in building a community where a human trafficking survivor doesn’t just survive their trafficking situation, but instead they’re set up to thrive.”
The Department of Community Resources and Services plans to expand its outreach and education. It will also conduct a community survey to better identify the areas of Howard County where trafficking and exploitation are prevalent.
Howard County was the only jurisdiction in Maryland to receive money from the Department of Justice’s Office for Victims of Crime in this funding cycle, which gave more than $97.4 million to states and supporting organizations in the United States.
“It was a competitive open grant process,” Nunez said. “We put together the strongest application we could, focusing heavily on partnerships that we have within our county.”
“Our Department of Community Resources and Services works very closely with the police department, which works very closely with HopeWorks,” said Jarrett Carter, the communications manager for the Department of Community Resources and Services. “I think that strategy between the three agencies where you can approach human trafficking from an investigative to a survivor support mechanism made our application stand out above many others.”
Although sex trafficking typically gets more attention from the press, labor trafficking is another way that people involved in human trafficking are victimized, Nunez said. Hotels, beauty salons, the massage industry, acupuncture, and agriculture are all examples of venues where labor trafficking can happen.
“Through this grant,” Ball said, “Howard County will proactively identify more vulnerable residents and victims of sex and labor trafficking, serve more survivors capably with high quality services, continue to effectively raise community awareness, and bring more traffickers to justice.”