Latest / The Vault: The Epstein Files / Mega Edition: Epstein Is The Ugly Face Of Human Trafficking, But The Problem Is Larger (11/5/26)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Talk about my home city, Las Vegas, Nevada, and how
- 0:06Speaker 1: children who are caught up in sex trafficking, well, how
- 0:10Speaker 1: they still go to jail here. And as we all know,
- 0:14Speaker 1: there's a gigantic, out-of-control human trafficking problem in Nevada to
- 0:19Speaker 1: begin with. So does it really help to send these
- 0:22Speaker 1: kids to jail? Does it really help to make the
- 0:28Speaker 1: problems even worse? For these kids who are being human trafficked?
- 0:34Speaker 1: Of course it doesn't. It doesn't make any sense. And
- 0:37Speaker 1: to be honest with you, there's a lot of things
- 0:39Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, Nevada as a whole, that don't make
- 0:42Speaker 1: any sense. But we have to do a better job
- 0:46Speaker 1: here in this state figuring it out. I understand that
- 0:50Speaker 1: they want to keep the corridor, the gaming corridor, as
- 0:54Speaker 1: safe and clean and as, you know, enjoyable as possible
- 0:59Speaker 1: for tourists. But that doesn't mean that law enforcement can
- 1:04Speaker 1: just swoop people up and put them in jail. Not kids, right?
- 1:11Speaker 1: I don't care if they're out there caught up in,
- 1:14Speaker 1: you know, whatever situation they're in. Some John picked them up.
- 1:18Speaker 1: If they're a minor, there needs to be a whole
- 1:20Speaker 1: different set of rules or resources that are available to them.
- 1:30Speaker 1: And same goes for adults who have been trafficked. We've
- 1:33Speaker 1: talked about this a lot. There's no incentive for trafficked
- 1:38Speaker 1: women to contact the police when this is the result.
- 1:43Speaker 1: And never mind if you're a kid. Imagine you're a
- 1:45Speaker 1: kid who has been brainwashed and groomed by some sick
- 1:49Speaker 1: fucking pimp. And you think that if you go to
- 1:52Speaker 1: the cops, you're going to go to jail. Well, you
- 1:55Speaker 1: will go to jail in Las Vegas, obviously, if you're
- 1:58Speaker 1: a child who has been human trafficked. And it's gross.
- 2:02Speaker 1: It's really disgusting to think about. And especially right here
- 2:07Speaker 1: in my own backyard. The problems in Vegas are pretty
- 2:15Speaker 1: bad when it comes to this sort of thing. Prostitution,
- 2:18Speaker 1: human trafficking, and I shouldn't even just say prostitution, forced prostitution.
- 2:24Speaker 1: Because as far as adults who decide to go into
- 2:30Speaker 1: the sex industry, that's a whole different topic, right? It's
- 2:33Speaker 1: definitely different than being human traffic. That's for fucking sure. Now,
- 2:37Speaker 1: you can disagree with people's choices, right? But I'm certainly
- 2:41Speaker 1: not the morality police. If a woman or man decides
- 2:45Speaker 1: they want to be a porn star or work in
- 2:48Speaker 1: a brothel or whatever it is, it's not my place
- 2:51Speaker 1: to tell them not to do it. But it certainly
- 2:54Speaker 1: is society's place, my place, your place, everybody's place, to
- 2:59Speaker 1: put some heat on the police, put some heat on
- 3:01Speaker 1: to our policy makers, so that there's different laws on
- 3:06Speaker 1: the books that treat children differently. Because a 16-year-old kid
- 3:11Speaker 1: who gets picked up in a sex trafficking sting, chances
- 3:16Speaker 1: are that 16-year-old kid didn't choose to be in that position, okay?
- 3:23Speaker 1: So the people that put that child in that position,
- 3:26Speaker 1: they're the ones that should go to jail. They're the
- 3:29Speaker 1: ones that should go to prison. The child should be
- 3:32Speaker 1: put into some sort of facility or whatever the resources are.
- 3:38Speaker 1: That's where the child should go to get the help
- 3:40Speaker 1: that the child obviously needs. And then we come back
- 3:43Speaker 1: in the full circle, right? Where are these resources? So
- 3:46Speaker 1: it certainly is a big problem, right? We don't have
- 3:48Speaker 1: the resources in place. So what do you do? I'd
- 3:54Speaker 1: really like to hear some of these politicians that are
- 3:58Speaker 1: talking about this infrastructure bill add some of this kind
- 4:02Speaker 1: of stuff to the infrastructure bill. I certainly have no
- 4:04Speaker 1: problem with my tax dollars going to help fellow citizens,
- 4:08Speaker 1: fellow humans in the country who get caught up in
- 4:12Speaker 1: a sex trafficking ring. And that's why I've said from
- 4:15Speaker 1: the beginning that the $ 3. 5 trillion is not enough. Go bold.
- 4:20Speaker 1: If you're going to start talking about infrastructure, go bold.
- 4:24Speaker 1: How about $ 12 trillion over 10 years? And we get
- 4:28Speaker 1: the pipeline from the southeast and the northeast to the
- 4:33Speaker 1: west to help with the droughts. A water pipeline. We
- 4:36Speaker 1: get resources for human trafficking victims. All of it. My
- 4:41Speaker 1: point is we have the finances to do it. We
- 4:45Speaker 1: don't have the willpower. And that's what fires me up
- 4:48Speaker 1: and gets me so mad. I mean, since 9-11, we've
- 4:54Speaker 1: spent like $ 22. 6 billion on defense. Excuse me, trillion dollars
- 5:00Speaker 1: on defense. When you talk about, you know, inner city policing, blah, blah, blah,
- 5:03Speaker 1: all of it. Add it all up, like $ 22 trillion.
- 5:08Speaker 1: You're telling me there ain't a few hundred billion in
- 5:11Speaker 1: resources that we could pump into the system to help
- 5:15Speaker 1: women and children who have been trafficked? You know, the
- 5:19Speaker 1: most vulnerable amongst us? You know, it's all fine and
- 5:23Speaker 1: well for those of us who have a decent life.
- 5:27Speaker 1: You know, we can put our blinders on, right? Drive
- 5:29Speaker 1: by people who are homeless, who might be doing worse
- 5:32Speaker 1: than us, crazy or whatever, and ignore the problem and
- 5:36Speaker 1: just keep it moving to whatever our destination is. And
- 5:42Speaker 1: we all do it. We're all guilty of it, me included.
- 5:46Speaker 1: But now my eyes are opened a bit, folks. And
- 5:48Speaker 1: when I drive by people like that, I drive by
- 5:50Speaker 1: situations like that. I try to look a little bit
- 5:54Speaker 1: deeper than just what the surface is providing me. How
- 5:57Speaker 1: did they get into that situation? They have a mom
- 6:00Speaker 1: and a dad. They have family. They have people that
- 6:02Speaker 1: cared about them at some time in their life. How
- 6:04Speaker 1: the fuck do you get to this point? And it's
- 6:08Speaker 1: even more when you hear a story about a child, right?
- 6:12Speaker 1: It's just unseemly to think that. What I always do
- 6:16Speaker 1: is I put myself back to when I was 16
- 6:17Speaker 1: and what I was doing. I was a numbskull. an
- 6:21Speaker 1: absolute moron, 16-year-old boy, right? Grew up in Las Vegas,
- 6:26Speaker 1: listening to, you know, a gangster rap, thinking, you know,
- 6:29Speaker 1: saying the word bitch and all that stuff was cool.
- 6:33Speaker 1: But I can never, I didn't know left from right.
- 6:37Speaker 1: I didn't know anything about life. But at least, you know,
- 6:42Speaker 1: I had my parents there, you know, my pops to
- 6:44Speaker 1: keep me on the right track. A lot of these people,
- 6:48Speaker 1: they don't know anything about life. These girls, these young kids,
- 6:52Speaker 1: and they don't have people to keep them on the
- 6:54Speaker 1: right track. They don't have people that if they slip,
- 6:59Speaker 1: they'll pick them up. They don't have that. So what
- 7:02Speaker 1: happens is they run into these sick fucking human traffickers
- 7:06Speaker 1: or pimps or whatever it is, and they're groomed. And
- 7:11Speaker 1: before you know it, these girls are on the street
- 7:14Speaker 1: or doing escort services up on the strip or whatever.
- 7:18Speaker 1: And they're not even the wiser that they're even a prostitute.
- 7:21Speaker 1: They think they're, oh, I'm in love or whatever it
- 7:23Speaker 1: may be. But those kids, they should not be going
- 7:27Speaker 1: to jail. And I don't care about, oh, we want
- 7:33Speaker 1: to keep the strip safe. You want to keep the
- 7:36Speaker 1: strip safe? Stop all of the hooligans that are out
- 7:39Speaker 1: there fucking thugging around. Stop those people. These kids that
- 7:44Speaker 1: get caught up in a human trafficking situation or a
- 7:47Speaker 1: situation where they're caught with a john. They shouldn't have
- 7:51Speaker 1: a record. They shouldn't go to jail. None of that shit.
- 7:56Speaker 1: There has to be some sort of facility where they
- 7:58Speaker 1: can go to get help. We have the resources, alright? Look,
- 8:04Speaker 1: I'm obviously not smart enough to figure this problem out.
- 8:07Speaker 1: Or I wouldn't be sitting here on this podcast. I'd
- 8:09Speaker 1: be in some elected office somewhere. dicking around trying to
- 8:13Speaker 1: fix it. But my object here is to bring a
- 8:20Speaker 1: little bit of awareness to it, right? If we're aware
- 8:22Speaker 1: to what's going on and we all work together towards
- 8:26Speaker 1: a goal, we're much more powerful then. You know, as
- 8:30Speaker 1: opposed to one person showing up demanding change, if we're
- 8:33Speaker 1: all demanding change, they have to take notice of us.
- 8:36Speaker 1: Like I always say, one gnat, eh, no big deal.
- 8:39Speaker 1: 10 million gnats, now you can't breathe. So the situation
- 8:45Speaker 1: here in Las Vegas is obviously foobar. The situation in Nevada, deplorable.
- 8:51Speaker 1: And we're going to jump into this article from the
- 8:54Speaker 1: Washington Post, and we're going to add some context to
- 8:57Speaker 1: all of that. So like I said, this article is
- 9:01Speaker 1: from the Washington Post. The author is Jessica Contrera. And
- 9:07Speaker 1: the headline, Sex-trafficked kids are crime victims. In Las Vegas,
- 9:12Speaker 1: they still go to jail. Pretty horrible, man. Honestly, it's
- 9:15Speaker 1: pretty horrible to think. Before he stopped his car, the
- 9:22Speaker 1: man wanted a better look at the young woman on
- 9:24Speaker 1: the sidewalk. It was just before 11. On a sweltering
- 9:28Speaker 1: summer night, he knew he could find what he was
- 9:30Speaker 1: looking for a few blocks from the Las Vegas Strip.
- 9:34Speaker 1: He slowed in front of a Motel 6 and peered
- 9:37Speaker 1: at three thin, barely covered bodies. Teenagers. He was sure
- 9:42Speaker 1: of it. The man rolled down his passenger side window
- 9:46Speaker 1: as he had so many times before. No habla ingles,
- 9:50Speaker 1: he said, as a girl in a tight pink dress
- 9:53Speaker 1: stepped forward. She was petite and black with brown eyes
- 9:58Speaker 1: magnified by extra long fake eyelashes she didn't seem as
- 10:02Speaker 1: young as the hispanic looking girl behind her but the
- 10:05Speaker 1: man wasn't going to be picky yeah well why should
- 10:08Speaker 1: he be picky right he's sick these sick people that
- 10:11Speaker 1: are out there trolling these streets for girls and look
- 10:15Speaker 1: man go to the brothel bro right If you have
- 10:18Speaker 1: to be engaged in some kind of pay for sex,
- 10:24Speaker 1: at least go to like a brothel or someplace where
- 10:26Speaker 1: it's controlled. Yeah, walking around, picking girls up on the street.
- 10:32Speaker 1: Little 16, 17 year old girls, 15 year old girls.
- 10:35Speaker 1: The fuck is wrong with you? Don't you have a daughter?
- 10:37Speaker 1: Don't you have anyone in your life you care about
- 10:39Speaker 1: that's a woman? He motioned for what he wanted and
- 10:47Speaker 1: promised he wasn't a cop. The girl opened his door,
- 10:51Speaker 1: telling him it would be 80. And in Vegas, I've
- 10:56Speaker 1: talked about it before, there are several different tracks where
- 11:01Speaker 1: this occurs. One of the main tracks where this occurs,
- 11:04Speaker 1: off of the strip, where you get a lot of
- 11:06Speaker 1: street girls, is a place called Boulder Highway. Now, Boulder
- 11:11Speaker 1: Highway is... Oh, I don't know, probably about five miles
- 11:16Speaker 1: from Las Vegas Boulevard. And on Boulder Highway, there are
- 11:22Speaker 1: several casinos. You have Boulder Station, you have Sam's Town,
- 11:26Speaker 1: you have Arizona Charlie's, and these are local places, right?
- 11:32Speaker 1: But that part of town, over there on Boulder Highway especially,
- 11:37Speaker 1: is rife with drugs and prostitution. So at any time
- 11:42Speaker 1: of the day, while you're driving down Boulder Highway, from
- 11:45Speaker 1: about Sahara and Boulder Highway, all the way down to
- 11:48Speaker 1: Tropicana and Boulder Highway, it is like... Remember that show
- 11:56Speaker 1: on HBO, Hookers on the Point, Hookers at the Point,
- 11:58Speaker 1: talking about Hunts Point in New York? That's what it
- 12:02Speaker 1: looks like. It's crazy out there. Girls walking all over
- 12:06Speaker 1: the place, wearing like literally nothing. You obviously know What
- 12:10Speaker 1: they're up to. And then if you go to any
- 12:13Speaker 1: of the casinos. On the Boulder Highway. Go to Boulder Station.
- 12:17Speaker 1: Or Arizona Charlie's. Or Sam's Town. Chances are you're going
- 12:21Speaker 1: to be propositioned. By one of these ladies. And I
- 12:28Speaker 1: always ask myself. How did it come to that for them?
- 12:33Speaker 1: At what point did this happen? And would they still
- 12:39Speaker 1: continue to do it. if they had the resources to
- 12:42Speaker 1: get out. And inevitably, I come to the conclusion that
- 12:45Speaker 1: most of them would not be doing this if they
- 12:48Speaker 1: could get out. And what I mean is the ones
- 12:52Speaker 1: that are working on the street here, right? I don't
- 12:55Speaker 1: mean sex work in general, because that would be a
- 12:58Speaker 1: pretty bold statement. I don't know what everybody wants to do.
- 13:01Speaker 1: I'm talking about These streetwalker type women who are caught
- 13:06Speaker 1: up in obvious human trafficking situations. These women want to
- 13:09Speaker 1: get out, but what do they do? Where do they go?
- 13:11Speaker 1: Who do they turn to? What resources are there for them?
- 13:15Speaker 1: And I can tell you right now in Las Vegas,
- 13:16Speaker 1: there are not many resources for these people. Alcenta, si,
- 13:25Speaker 1: he agreed. He pulled away from the curb. In Spanish,
- 13:28Speaker 1: he told her how pretty she was. He didn't say
- 13:31Speaker 1: where he was taking her. She tried to use an
- 13:34Speaker 1: app on her phone to translate, but a minute later,
- 13:37Speaker 1: the man steered her into the lot of another motel. Now,
- 13:42Speaker 1: think about this for a minute. You're a fly on
- 13:45Speaker 1: the wall watching this unfold. This poor girl can't even
- 13:49Speaker 1: speak the language, right? Little girl, obviously, trying to use
- 13:55Speaker 1: some translator app on her phone to try and communicate
- 13:58Speaker 1: with a sick fucking John. The whole entire cycle is
- 14:02Speaker 1: broken and it's just so, so disturbing to see it
- 14:06Speaker 1: play out time and time again. He parked. The girl
- 14:13Speaker 1: turned toward him. Then she whipped her head around. Someone
- 14:16Speaker 1: was outside the open car window waving something in her face. Police,
- 14:21Speaker 1: the stranger announced, showing her a badge. Oh my God,
- 14:25Speaker 1: the girl gasped. The driver had lied. He wasn't a buyer.
- 14:30Speaker 1: But an undercover detective. The girl was ordered to scoot forward.
- 14:34Speaker 1: And put her hands behind her back. The handcuffs closed
- 14:38Speaker 1: around her wrists. Imagine. A little 16 year old girl.
- 14:43Speaker 1: Being human trafficked. And getting arrested for it. No conversation.
- 14:51Speaker 1: None of that. Before the arrest is even made. Before
- 14:54Speaker 1: they even talk about arresting this girl. Or this kid.
- 14:57Speaker 1: There should be a full on conversation. Full on conversation.
- 15:02Speaker 1: How did you get into this situation? Are you being trafficked?
- 15:06Speaker 1: Do you need help? We don't want to put you
- 15:08Speaker 1: in jail. We want to set you up with the
- 15:10Speaker 1: resources you need. That's the conversation that should be happening.
- 15:13Speaker 1: Instead of fucking let's put some handcuffs on them and
- 15:15Speaker 1: throw them in jail. This love affair that we have
- 15:20Speaker 1: as a nation with putting people in prison has to end.
- 15:26Speaker 1: It's unbelievable to me that more people don't see it.
- 15:31Speaker 1: That even that becomes a political hot potato issue. Oh yeah,
- 15:35Speaker 1: put him in jail for 150 fucking years of hard time.
- 15:39Speaker 1: For jaywalking. Those kind of people. They're not interested in reform.
- 15:44Speaker 1: They're the kind of people that always say, oh, it'll
- 15:45Speaker 1: never happen to me. Until it does. Until you get
- 15:49Speaker 1: caught up in the system. That's why I'm such a
- 15:52Speaker 1: proponent of fixing the system. I've seen it destroy many,
- 15:56Speaker 1: many people. And the fact that there's no resources... For
- 16:01Speaker 1: people like this girl and others? It's a joke. If
- 16:05Speaker 1: we can spend $ 22. 6 trillion dropping bombs on people, we
- 16:09Speaker 1: can't have some resources for the American people in our
- 16:12Speaker 1: own country? Then what's the point of doing all the
- 16:15Speaker 1: other stuff? If we can't fix shit here in our
- 16:17Speaker 1: own backyard, how can we pop our head up over
- 16:20Speaker 1: the wall and tell our neighbors to do it? Extremely hypocritical.
- 16:28Speaker 1: She was the third person that evening to be arrested
- 16:31Speaker 1: by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department's vice operation, which
- 16:35Speaker 1: tries to stop prostitution in a place where tourists often
- 16:38Speaker 1: mistakenly believe it is legal. Seven nights a week, undercover
- 16:43Speaker 1: officers fan out to cover casinos, strip clubs, and street
- 16:47Speaker 1: corners using beards, tattoos, and fake accents to evade detection. Then,
- 16:53Speaker 1: arrest women when they agree to a price. So, again...
- 16:58Speaker 1: It's the easy target, right? The women. Oh, let's go
- 17:00Speaker 1: get the women on the street. How about you bring
- 17:03Speaker 1: those women in for a conversation and you find out
- 17:06Speaker 1: who the fuck is trafficking them and you go after them.
- 17:09Speaker 1: Why don't we have a trafficking task force? Where all
- 17:14Speaker 1: they do is go after men or women who put
- 17:19Speaker 1: people on the street or sell people into human trafficking situations.
- 17:27Speaker 1: It's because they don't take the problem seriously enough. Stings
- 17:34Speaker 1: like these are becoming rarer as police departments turn away
- 17:37Speaker 1: from criminalizing people who may be pushed into the sex
- 17:41Speaker 1: trade by desperation or by a human trafficker. And that
- 17:45Speaker 1: is exactly the way it should be treated. Not one
- 17:49Speaker 1: size fits all, okay, with anything when it comes to
- 17:51Speaker 1: the law. But especially this. Not everybody's situation is the same.
- 17:57Speaker 1: Not everybody's circumstance is the same. Some of these ladies
- 18:02Speaker 1: are being trafficked. Some of these ladies have serious drug
- 18:06Speaker 1: problems and they're being trafficked. And the list goes on
- 18:08Speaker 1: and on and on. And what do you think arresting
- 18:11Speaker 1: them does? Puts a charge on their record. Now, if
- 18:15Speaker 1: they want to get out of this, they have to
- 18:16Speaker 1: explain to their presumptive employer why they have the charge
- 18:22Speaker 1: that they have. And it's just a fucked up situation.
- 18:27Speaker 1: So again, it really boils down, at least for me,
- 18:30Speaker 1: to resources. There has to be a plethora of resources
- 18:34Speaker 1: for these people. And there is none. Teenagers, especially those
- 18:42Speaker 1: in poverty or the foster care system, are particularly vulnerable.
- 18:47Speaker 1: Traffickers pose as trusted adults or befriend them on social media,
- 18:52Speaker 1: then manipulate them to be sold for sexual abuse. Under
- 18:56Speaker 1: federal law, these children are victims, not criminals. And that's
- 19:01Speaker 1: what the law enforcement needs to remember that. They really
- 19:05Speaker 1: need to remember that. Instead of just turning and burning
- 19:07Speaker 1: through arrests to show that, hey, look, we're keeping things
- 19:11Speaker 1: safe up on the strip. It needs to be more nuanced.
- 19:16Speaker 1: We need to look behind just the arrest totals. Who's
- 19:20Speaker 1: being arrested? Why are they being arrested? What's their story?
- 19:25Speaker 1: Instead of just throwing everybody in prison... And being done
- 19:27Speaker 1: with it... We need to be more proactive as a society...
- 19:31Speaker 1: To try and help people... Yet every year... Kids who
- 19:37Speaker 1: have been sex trafficked... Are detained and charged with crimes...
- 19:40Speaker 1: At least 290 minors... Were arrested for prostitution related offenses...
- 19:42Speaker 1: In 2019... The most recent year... National data... is available
- 19:50Speaker 1: 40 were 14 or younger 290 were arrested okay these
- 19:53Speaker 1: are minors children for prostitution if 290 were arrested how
- 19:56Speaker 1: many do you think were out there It gives me
- 20:04Speaker 1: the chills thinking about it. How many didn't get arrested?
- 20:07Speaker 1: How many slipped through the cracks? How many got sold
- 20:10Speaker 1: to a different country? How many got sold to this
- 20:12Speaker 1: one or that one? How many are never going to
- 20:14Speaker 1: be able to tell their stories? So while 290 is
- 20:20Speaker 1: a big number, I'm pretty sure that you could multiply
- 20:25Speaker 1: that number by 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 even.
- 20:29Speaker 1: And that's probably the real amount of These poor kids
- 20:33Speaker 1: that are out there forced into human trafficking under 14.
- 20:39Speaker 1: The state that arrested the most kids, at least 110,
- 20:43Speaker 1: was Nevada. Here, the multi-billion dollar casino industry has long
- 20:48Speaker 1: been a magnet for traffickers. Like the one who brought
- 20:51Speaker 1: the girl in the pink dress to the Motel 6. Now,
- 20:55Speaker 1: there are several Motel 6s like this here in town.
- 21:00Speaker 1: But again, one of the most prolific ones is the
- 21:03Speaker 1: one on Boulder Highway. It is used for this purpose
- 21:11Speaker 1: on a regular basis. As we speak right now, this
- 21:15Speaker 1: activity is occurring there. The police are aware of it.
- 21:18Speaker 1: Vice is aware of it. Everyone's aware of it. I
- 21:24Speaker 1: don't ever even see a police presence down there anymore.
- 21:26Speaker 1: It's like they've given up on the area. And the
- 21:29Speaker 1: drug problem down there? Let me tell you what, if
- 21:32Speaker 1: there's ever a zombie apocalypse that starts, that'll probably be
- 21:36Speaker 1: ground zero for the kind of drugs that are being
- 21:39Speaker 1: done down in that place. Now, she was standing in
- 21:44Speaker 1: the headlights of a police car, watching detectives dig through
- 21:47Speaker 1: her rhinestone-crusted purse. It contained a motel card and condoms,
- 21:52Speaker 1: but no ID. The girl told detectives her name, which
- 21:58Speaker 1: begins with a K. The Washington Post, which witnessed her arrest,
- 22:02Speaker 1: is identifying her only by her first initial because she
- 22:05Speaker 1: is a minor and the victim of sex crimes. Kay
- 22:10Speaker 1: told the officers she was 18, but when asked her
- 22:13Speaker 1: birth date, she miscalculated, saying she was born in 2001. So,
- 22:17Speaker 1: and that's another one of the telltale signs. Anytime that
- 22:22Speaker 1: there's one of these girls without an ID, right away,
- 22:27Speaker 1: something's up. You got to think right away, is this
- 22:29Speaker 1: a minor or what's going on here? Because Nevada is
- 22:33Speaker 1: pretty strict about ID. You have to have ID everywhere
- 22:35Speaker 1: you go in this city. And when one of these
- 22:40Speaker 1: girls doesn't have ID, it definitely rings alarm bells that
- 22:43Speaker 1: it's a minor. I know you're not telling the truth,
- 22:48Speaker 1: said Richard Luong, a vice squad sergeant. He reminded her
- 22:52Speaker 1: that lying to the police was a crime. So how
- 22:55Speaker 1: old are you? K looked down at her fuzzy sandals.
- 22:59Speaker 1: I'm 16, she said. You know, these kind of... It's
- 23:07Speaker 1: a chore to read through these articles, folks. It really
- 23:11Speaker 1: is a chore. It's depressing. It's disgusting. And then when
- 23:16Speaker 1: it's going on in my own backyard, it makes it
- 23:20Speaker 1: even that much worse. And to think, 16 years old
- 23:27Speaker 1: and forced into this life. All of her dreams, all
- 23:30Speaker 1: of her hopes shattered. At 16, she should be worried
- 23:34Speaker 1: about going to the concert with her friends, going to
- 23:36Speaker 1: the mall, you know, going on a trip to the
- 23:40Speaker 1: cheerleading competition, whatever it is. Not looking down at her
- 23:44Speaker 1: fuzzy sandals. In the presence of a cop, that really
- 23:49Speaker 1: doesn't give a fuck. The sergeant wasn't surprised. He and
- 23:56Speaker 1: his colleagues had arrested girls as young as 11. Most
- 23:59Speaker 1: were black. Most had been written off as runaways. And
- 24:03Speaker 1: here was another. A quick search showed Kay had been
- 24:07Speaker 1: missing for more than a year. And again, it's the
- 24:11Speaker 1: problem of the foster systems in this country. The problem
- 24:15Speaker 1: of these kids just getting lost in the sauce. Because why?
- 24:19Speaker 1: They're poor. Because they're black or Hispanic or they come
- 24:25Speaker 1: from some trailer trash community down south and they're white
- 24:29Speaker 1: trash nobody cares about so we should just give up
- 24:31Speaker 1: on them? These kids don't mean shit. I got breaking
- 24:33Speaker 1: news for you. That kid, this girl, she could be
- 24:36Speaker 1: the one who finds a cure for cancer. She could
- 24:38Speaker 1: have been somebody who found a way to put people
- 24:42Speaker 1: in cryogenic sleep. You get where I'm going with this, right?
- 24:46Speaker 1: These kids aren't a lost cause. and we should not
- 24:49Speaker 1: be giving up on children. I don't care if they've
- 24:51Speaker 1: been human trafficked or otherwise. The resources need to be
- 24:55Speaker 1: put into place, and these kids need help. They don't
- 24:59Speaker 1: need to be arrested. I cannot be under arrest for prostitution.
- 25:06Speaker 1: I'm a minor, she snapped. She sounded confident, and he
- 25:10Speaker 1: knew why. At least 10 states had passed laws that
- 25:14Speaker 1: children could not be arrested for solicitation or prostitution. Nevada
- 25:19Speaker 1: was not one of them. And it doesn't shock me, honestly.
- 25:22Speaker 1: Nevada's always behind the curve. We're never really ahead of
- 25:26Speaker 1: the game here. We take a lot of our marching orders, unfortunately,
- 25:31Speaker 1: from California. And our governor is a trash bag human being,
- 25:35Speaker 1: Steve Sisolak, an absolute trash bag human being. He doesn't
- 25:39Speaker 1: care about this shit. Never hear any of these people
- 25:41Speaker 1: talking about this. Unless, of course, it'll help him get
- 25:44Speaker 1: some votes. Then Sisolak will be all over it. But
- 25:48Speaker 1: besides that, dude's useless. An absolute waste of space. You're
- 25:55Speaker 1: not in California, Luong explained. So unfortunately, you were under arrest.
- 26:00Speaker 1: In Las Vegas, more than a decade of attempts to
- 26:03Speaker 1: fund a safe, secure refuge for trafficked children had failed. Instead,
- 26:09Speaker 1: Kay was about to be taken to the place where
- 26:11Speaker 1: hundreds of victimized kids before her had been sent. And look,
- 26:17Speaker 1: This is what I talk about here in Nevada. This
- 26:19Speaker 1: is why I keep bringing it up. There are no resources.
- 26:24Speaker 1: It's a shame. All of these casinos should be ashamed
- 26:28Speaker 1: of themselves. A lot of this shit is based on
- 26:30Speaker 1: their business. And they're not setting up, they're not getting
- 26:34Speaker 1: together and pitching in a bunch of dough to put
- 26:36Speaker 1: some kind of resource center together for trafficked individuals. Yeah,
- 26:41Speaker 1: but go ahead and tighten up those slot machines again
- 26:44Speaker 1: so nobody can win a buck. The greed, the corporate
- 26:48Speaker 1: greed that has infected Las Vegas is going to ruin
- 26:52Speaker 1: this city. I mean, it's already on its way to
- 26:54Speaker 1: being ruined by the corporate scumbags. But imagine how much
- 26:58Speaker 1: better the city would be if we didn't have all
- 27:00Speaker 1: of these corporations running it. Can I call my mother,
- 27:06Speaker 1: she asked. Not yet, she was told. Then her guarded
- 27:09Speaker 1: expression was gone. She looked afraid, with her wrists still
- 27:13Speaker 1: cuffed behind her waist. Kay was guided back into the
- 27:16Speaker 1: car of the undercover detective. Do you enjoy doing this?
- 27:21Speaker 1: I wouldn't enjoy doing something like this, the detective remembered
- 27:24Speaker 1: telling her. I don't, Kay answered. And then he drove
- 27:28Speaker 1: her through the gate, the juvenile hall. And as the cop, look,
- 27:32Speaker 1: I want to be more critical of them, but the
- 27:37Speaker 1: things that they see on a daily basis hardens their soul, right?
- 27:40Speaker 1: Makes them callous. And it's the policy makers who are
- 27:44Speaker 1: the real problem. Now don't get me wrong, there are
- 27:46Speaker 1: a lot of scumbag cops too, no doubt about it.
- 27:49Speaker 1: But the policy makers are the ones putting the policies
- 27:52Speaker 1: in place. And they could easily, easily put a law
- 27:56Speaker 1: in the books where these girls don't go to jail
- 27:58Speaker 1: if they're under 18. They go to some sort of
- 28:00Speaker 1: facility where they're offered help. We have a gazillion miles
- 28:07Speaker 1: of desert in this city. You're telling me we can't
- 28:09Speaker 1: build a compound? Where at-risk youth can go and get
- 28:14Speaker 1: an education, can be safe, take a shower, have some food.
- 28:19Speaker 1: We can't swing that? Of course we can. There's no
- 28:23Speaker 1: willpower to do it. That's the problem. That's what it
- 28:27Speaker 1: comes down to in this country. Our politicians do not
- 28:30Speaker 1: have the willpower to make our lives better. They're too
- 28:32Speaker 1: busy on the take. They're too busy in the grift.
- 28:35Speaker 1: They're too busy wetting their beak. What's going on? First,
- 28:42Speaker 1: the buyers were the railroad workers and ranchers, frequenting saloons
- 28:47Speaker 1: that sold more than liquor. Then came the builders of
- 28:51Speaker 1: the Hoover Dam, bringing their paychecks and preferences to the
- 28:54Speaker 1: town known for lewd women. Soon, there were mobsters and
- 28:59Speaker 1: casino builders, gamblers and tourists, vacationers promised what happened in
- 29:04Speaker 1: Vegas stays in Vegas, and bachelor parties wanting to live
- 29:08Speaker 1: out the scene from The Hangover. And it's true. People
- 29:12Speaker 1: come to Vegas and they act like there's no rules,
- 29:15Speaker 1: no laws, like they're in, you know, an episode of
- 29:19Speaker 1: Mad Max. Working in a casino, I have seen it.
- 29:22Speaker 1: I have lived it. I have witnessed it. It is
- 29:25Speaker 1: crazy the way some people conduct themselves in this city.
- 29:29Speaker 1: No doubt about it. A tough job for law enforcement.
- 29:32Speaker 1: People come here. They think prostitution is legal. They think
- 29:35Speaker 1: they can do drugs wherever they want. And it becomes
- 29:38Speaker 1: an inescapable shit show. And again, like I said, the
- 29:44Speaker 1: prostitution is literally out of control. But that's all part
- 29:50Speaker 1: of the Vegas atmosphere, right? So again, I'm not poo-pooing
- 29:55Speaker 1: on the sex industry. If people choose to do that
- 29:59Speaker 1: out of their own, you know, they consent to do that.
- 30:01Speaker 1: That's how they choose to make a living. I'm not
- 30:04Speaker 1: here to tell anybody how to live. I am not
- 30:09Speaker 1: the arbiter of morality, right? I, you know, I don't
- 30:12Speaker 1: really care what consenting adults do. I don't pay attention, really,
- 30:17Speaker 1: to what consenting adults do. If you and your boyfriend
- 30:20Speaker 1: want to strap yourselves to the ceiling fan and beat
- 30:24Speaker 1: each other with garden hoses... I don't care as long
- 30:27Speaker 1: as you're both consenting. God bless, chindan, seslevi, whatever it is.
- 30:33Speaker 1: But when it comes to this kind of thing, where
- 30:35Speaker 1: these children obviously can't consent, they're minors, yeah, Houston, or
- 30:40Speaker 1: should I say Las Vegas, we have a problem. For
- 30:48Speaker 1: as long as Las Vegas has occupied its unique place
- 30:52Speaker 1: in American culture, it has profited from the promise of
- 30:55Speaker 1: sex for sale. Yet in the 1990s, before child sex
- 30:59Speaker 1: trafficking emerged as a prominent cause for celebrities and elected officials,
- 31:05Speaker 1: Las Vegas also became one of the first places in
- 31:07Speaker 1: the country with a police unit designed to go after
- 31:10Speaker 1: child traffickers. An effort with a now cringe-inducing name, Stop
- 31:15Speaker 1: Turning Out Child Prostitutes. Yikes. Now, of course, good idea
- 31:21Speaker 1: that Las Vegas had this idea, right? They had this unit,
- 31:24Speaker 1: the child sex trafficking unit, But again, it comes down
- 31:28Speaker 1: to enforcement. It's all, you know, fine and well to
- 31:32Speaker 1: have the unit there, but what about the enforcement? And
- 31:36Speaker 1: then after the enforcement, what about the resources to help? Today,
- 31:43Speaker 1: the police department's Child Exploitation Task Force, which works in
- 31:47Speaker 1: tandem with the FBI, is made up of four detectives
- 31:50Speaker 1: on call for the moment when yet another victimized kid
- 31:54Speaker 1: is found. On the night Kay was arrested, it was
- 31:57Speaker 1: Detective Maxwell Moore who cut short a late night workout
- 32:01Speaker 1: in his garage to go meet her. There you go,
- 32:03Speaker 1: Maxwell Moore. See, that's what I'm talking about, right? If
- 32:07Speaker 1: you're going to be in this fight as a cop
- 32:10Speaker 1: or social worker or whatever, hey, whenever the call comes,
- 32:15Speaker 1: it's time to go. You're doing a workout, you're eating
- 32:18Speaker 1: your Wheaties, you're watching the ball game, whatever it is,
- 32:21Speaker 1: it's time to go. Policing was Moore's second career, after
- 32:28Speaker 1: working as a wedding photographer at a drive-thru chapel capturing
- 32:32Speaker 1: the classic Vegas scene over and over again. Now, at 33,
- 32:37Speaker 1: he was tasked with stopping something far uglier that happened
- 32:41Speaker 1: every day here, too. By the time Moore arrived at
- 32:44Speaker 1: the jail, Luong's squad had used the Motel 6 card
- 32:48Speaker 1: in Kay's purse to discover who paid for the room
- 32:50Speaker 1: she was staying in, a 29-year-old with a history of
- 32:54Speaker 1: violent robberies. California had a warrant out for his arrest
- 32:58Speaker 1: and it listed him as armed and dangerous. And these
- 33:03Speaker 1: are the kind of men inevitably or women that these
- 33:06Speaker 1: kids end up with. Somebody that's not scared of violence.
- 33:14Speaker 1: Somebody who is not a stranger to it. Somebody who
- 33:17Speaker 1: will put their hands on these kids, unfortunately, or women
- 33:20Speaker 1: and beat the living hell out of them if they
- 33:22Speaker 1: don't do what they say. And in some cases, they
- 33:25Speaker 1: will kill them. So you got somebody with a violent
- 33:30Speaker 1: criminal record putting this girl out on the street and
- 33:34Speaker 1: the girl's the one who gets arrested. When this man
- 33:40Speaker 1: checked into the motel, he told the front desk attendant
- 33:43Speaker 1: he had a 16-year-old sister staying with him. And again,
- 33:46Speaker 1: that's on the motels as well, right? If you're going
- 33:49Speaker 1: to be a clerk in one of these motels, especially
- 33:51Speaker 1: if it's like a Motel 6, something like that, The
- 33:54Speaker 1: company should provide the training for you to spot signs
- 33:58Speaker 1: of this, kind of like we have the SAR system
- 34:02Speaker 1: in the banking world. It should be like that for
- 34:05Speaker 1: these motel workers. They can file a SAR, a suspicious
- 34:10Speaker 1: activity report around the activity in the hotel about somebody
- 34:15Speaker 1: getting a room. Oh, I have my 16-year-old sister with me.
- 34:17Speaker 1: There's been five or six different guys going in and
- 34:19Speaker 1: out of this room, that kind of thing. And then
- 34:22Speaker 1: there should be a local database where these reports are filed.
- 34:27Speaker 1: And one of these officers goes through them and checks
- 34:30Speaker 1: on these situations. We can't do that. We don't have
- 34:33Speaker 1: the money for that. Of course we do. We don't
- 34:37Speaker 1: have the willpower, folks. Moore's phone rang. Luong had something
- 34:43Speaker 1: else to share. They do check out tomorrow, the sergeant said.
- 34:47Speaker 1: Moore knew what that meant. The vice squad had a
- 34:50Speaker 1: shot at capturing the suspected trafficker and finding the two
- 34:53Speaker 1: other young looking girls Kay had been with. The more
- 34:56Speaker 1: he could get her to talk, the better their chances.
- 35:01Speaker 1: We'll see where she's at and I'll call you as
- 35:03Speaker 1: soon as I can, Moore said. And again, look, imagine
- 35:07Speaker 1: how this would be different. So you already arrested this girl, right?
- 35:11Speaker 1: You put her in jail, booked her. Why should you
- 35:14Speaker 1: want to help you? Now flip it around. Instead of
- 35:17Speaker 1: arresting her, you take her to a facility to help her.
- 35:20Speaker 1: And then you talk to her there. Give her some
- 35:23Speaker 1: new clothes. Let her take a shower. Let her call
- 35:26Speaker 1: her mom. But no. We take her to jail. Treat
- 35:30Speaker 1: her like a criminal. And the cycle repeats itself. He
- 35:37Speaker 1: walked into the juvenile jail. Familiar with its fluorescent lighting,
- 35:41Speaker 1: beige cinder block walls, and metal benches bolted to the floor.
- 35:46Speaker 1: He'd met kids here who were being sold by their
- 35:48Speaker 1: own parents or were exchanging sex for food or a
- 35:52Speaker 1: place to stay. He'd met boys and transgender victims. But
- 35:57Speaker 1: most nights, the stories he found here were the same.
- 36:00Speaker 1: A teen girl from Nevada or a nearby state yearning
- 36:04Speaker 1: for someone to care about her. And then into her
- 36:07Speaker 1: life came a guy who told her that she was beautiful,
- 36:11Speaker 1: that they could get rich together, that he would always
- 36:14Speaker 1: protect her. How many times have we heard that story, huh?
- 36:18Speaker 1: And in the Jeffrey Epstein case specifically, Jeffrey Epstein acted
- 36:21Speaker 1: as that man, right? I'm going to take care of you.
- 36:24Speaker 1: I'm going to send you to school. I'll pay for this.
- 36:26Speaker 1: I'll pay for that. Made Nadia a pilot. You know
- 36:31Speaker 1: what I mean? And that's what these people do. Epstein
- 36:34Speaker 1: on a grander scale, obviously, because he had more resources.
- 36:38Speaker 1: But these guys are going to sing sweet nothings into
- 36:42Speaker 1: the ears of these girls. They're going to get them
- 36:44Speaker 1: locked in, and then they're going to abuse them. And
- 36:47Speaker 1: that's exactly what they do. And if they're able to
- 36:50Speaker 1: do that to grown-ass women, you really think a child
- 36:53Speaker 1: who nobody loves in the first place is going to
- 36:56Speaker 1: be able to counter those grooming techniques? Soon, she was
- 37:03Speaker 1: speaking the language of the life or the game. She
- 37:06Speaker 1: was calling him daddy or king and talking about the
- 37:09Speaker 1: blade or the track she worked on, the date she
- 37:12Speaker 1: went on, how long she was unlockable, as loyal as
- 37:16Speaker 1: it gets. And that's what they do, right? They get
- 37:20Speaker 1: into the life and they're around all of these other
- 37:22Speaker 1: girls who have been hooking or whatever, trafficked for all
- 37:26Speaker 1: of this time. And before you know it, it's normalized.
- 37:30Speaker 1: This is just the way life is. There's nothing more
- 37:32Speaker 1: out there. This is my life. It's like you waking
- 37:35Speaker 1: up every morning and going to your job. To them,
- 37:38Speaker 1: it's normal behavior. We all know it's abnormal. We all
- 37:43Speaker 1: know that it shouldn't be happening in a functioning society,
- 37:46Speaker 1: but it is. And it was the same with Epstein's people, right?
- 37:50Speaker 1: All of the girls around him, they all thought that
- 37:52Speaker 1: was normalized because everyone else was doing it. These girls
- 37:59Speaker 1: weren't held hostage the way movie producers and online conspiracy
- 38:03Speaker 1: theorists like to imagine. They were carefully groomed into what
- 38:06Speaker 1: Moore called a trance. Like victims of domestic violence, they
- 38:10Speaker 1: became bonded to their own abusers. Again, like the situation
- 38:15Speaker 1: with Nadia, right? With Epstein. It's very difficult for me
- 38:19Speaker 1: to go hard in the paint. This girl was sold
- 38:23Speaker 1: to Epstein at 15 years old. Just think about that
- 38:27Speaker 1: for a minute. Obviously, the visceral reaction in you is,
- 38:31Speaker 1: everyone that was involved with Epstein should go to prison forever.
- 38:33Speaker 1: That's my visceral reaction as well. But it's a little
- 38:37Speaker 1: more complicated than that when it comes to a 15-year-old
- 38:40Speaker 1: girl who was sold into slavery, right? So, it's a
- 38:46Speaker 1: big problem. And big problems need big solutions. And unfortunately,
- 38:52Speaker 1: we're lacking solutions. To these girls, the detective was just
- 38:59Speaker 1: a square, someone who wasn't in the life and would
- 39:02Speaker 1: never understand that they were making their own choices. This
- 39:06Speaker 1: is the main reason Vegas police insist on arresting children
- 39:09Speaker 1: they acknowledge are victims. They believe if they take the
- 39:13Speaker 1: kids home or to the city's unlocked child welfare facility,
- 39:17Speaker 1: they will simply run back to those exploiting them. And
- 39:20Speaker 1: I agree in essence, right? There has to be someplace
- 39:24Speaker 1: to go, but jail is not it. a facility where
- 39:27Speaker 1: these kids can go get help, where they can't just... leave.
- 39:31Speaker 1: And the second these kids are picked up, the abuser
- 39:35Speaker 1: must be arrested. No bullshitting around, no waiting around, none
- 39:40Speaker 1: of it. Kicking in doors, arresting the man or woman
- 39:44Speaker 1: and indicting them on a bunch of crimes. human trafficking,
- 39:48Speaker 1: Man Act, if girls were transported over state lines, all
- 39:51Speaker 1: of it. Why are we going soft ever on these people?
- 39:56Speaker 1: But again, we circle back, like Jen Psaki, to a
- 39:59Speaker 1: point where it's down to the resources issue, right? If
- 40:03Speaker 1: there's no resources, what are we supposed to do? By
- 40:08Speaker 1: putting them in jail for a few days, officials argue,
- 40:11Speaker 1: they're giving kids a chance to get away from their trafficker,
- 40:14Speaker 1: get medical attention... and connect with an advocate and come
- 40:18Speaker 1: to the realization that they are used and abused. And again,
- 40:22Speaker 1: this can happen outside of jail. Why does it have
- 40:24Speaker 1: to be a jail? There should be a facility where
- 40:30Speaker 1: if these girls get picked up, there should be a
- 40:32Speaker 1: five-day hold or something where they can be processed, they
- 40:35Speaker 1: can talk to a specialist, they can talk to whoever
- 40:37Speaker 1: it may be, and the person who's abusing them can
- 40:41Speaker 1: also be picked up. But it shouldn't stop there either, right?
- 40:45Speaker 1: There has to be a halfway house or a facility,
- 40:47Speaker 1: a dormitory where these girls can go and know they're
- 40:50Speaker 1: going to be safe. Public transportation provided to and from
- 40:55Speaker 1: work until they get on their feet. We got people
- 40:59Speaker 1: who can send themselves to space for three seconds to
- 41:02Speaker 1: look down at the rest of us. You're telling me
- 41:05Speaker 1: we can't come up with the resources to build and
- 41:08Speaker 1: facilitate and manage a gigantic facility to help these people? Again,
- 41:14Speaker 1: of course we can. To show you how easy it
- 41:18Speaker 1: is to file... I just don't want someone taking advantage
- 41:21Speaker 1: of you. He would ask how much money they'd made
- 41:23Speaker 1: and they'd say, how much do you have on you?
- 41:25Speaker 1: How much do you have on you now? Even if
- 41:28Speaker 1: he saw the moment of understanding in a girl's eyes,
- 41:31Speaker 1: he still had to persuade her to let him search
- 41:33Speaker 1: her phone for evidence, tell him and others exactly what
- 41:37Speaker 1: the trafficker had done to her, and then testify at
- 41:40Speaker 1: a trial months away. more knew the likelihood of success.
- 41:45Speaker 1: Of the 922 child trafficking victims identified by Las Vegas
- 41:50Speaker 1: police between 2011 and 2019, 152 of their cases resulted
- 41:58Speaker 1: in a plea agreement or conviction of their trafficker at trial. Golly.
- 42:04Speaker 1: I mean, really? That's the best we could do? Hell
- 42:08Speaker 1: of a job, guys, by putting everybody in jail. Way
- 42:11Speaker 1: to go, folks. Great plan. If you weren't putting these
- 42:14Speaker 1: kids in jail and you were putting them in, you know,
- 42:17Speaker 1: a facility where they could get help, where they could
- 42:19Speaker 1: learn a trade maybe, go to community college, become a plumber,
- 42:23Speaker 1: become an air conditioning technician, become a slot tech, you
- 42:27Speaker 1: get my point, right? We make our problems a lot
- 42:33Speaker 1: worse as a society because we bail on things that
- 42:36Speaker 1: we find gross or out of line. Nobody wants to
- 42:38Speaker 1: dig deep because guess what? Nobody wants to be out
- 42:41Speaker 1: of their comfort zone, right? Well, like I've been telling
- 42:44Speaker 1: you folks for a long time here now, over two years,
- 42:47Speaker 1: it's time to get comfortable being uncomfortable. And if that
- 42:51Speaker 1: means stepping out of your echo chamber, your political tribe,
- 42:54Speaker 1: whatever it is, then so be it. It's the only
- 42:57Speaker 1: way you're going to grow. And it's the only way
- 43:00Speaker 1: we're going to be able to tackle the hard issues.
- 43:06Speaker 1: Advocates argued children would be more likely to participate if
- 43:09Speaker 1: they weren't also being put in jail. Uh, yeah. I'm
- 43:13Speaker 1: not an advocate. Just a tax-paying citizen. Just an average
- 43:16Speaker 1: everyday moron. And I could see that. Who the fuck
- 43:21Speaker 1: wants to go to jail? Who the hell wants to
- 43:23Speaker 1: cooperate after they get put in the hooscow? Certainly not me.
- 43:28Speaker 1: But all Morg could do was try to convince Kay
- 43:31Speaker 1: that even though his colleagues had just arrested her, he
- 43:34Speaker 1: was on her side. He wore a baseball hat and
- 43:37Speaker 1: a t-shirt that showed off the tattoos covering his forearms.
- 43:40Speaker 1: On one, there was a pinup girl straddling a rocket.
- 43:44Speaker 1: The detective believed his ink helped the girl see he
- 43:47Speaker 1: was different from other cops. I could see that, right?
- 43:50Speaker 1: But how about this? How about they get someone who
- 43:53Speaker 1: really is different from the other cops? Somebody who's from
- 43:55Speaker 1: the street. Somebody who understands the life. Somebody who has
- 44:00Speaker 1: done this, been there, done that. Come back from it.
- 44:06Speaker 1: if we provided the resources to the people who this
- 44:08Speaker 1: affects the most, don't you think that some of them
- 44:13Speaker 1: would flip that around and it would boomerang by them
- 44:16Speaker 1: becoming counselors or whatever else to help others and paying
- 44:21Speaker 1: it forward, right? But it all starts with the resources.
- 44:27Speaker 1: And if we can build these golf courses and all
- 44:29Speaker 1: these mega casinos and we can have resources for these people, folks.
- 44:36Speaker 1: It is unseemly. He settled himself into an interview room,
- 44:45Speaker 1: taking the padded desk chair and leaving a hard plastic
- 44:47Speaker 1: chair open. Kay appeared at the door. She had just
- 44:51Speaker 1: been strip searched. All of her possessions had been taken
- 44:54Speaker 1: from her. Her pink dress had been traded for a
- 44:56Speaker 1: sweatshirt and sweatpants. I'm Max, the detective said. I'm here
- 45:01Speaker 1: to talk to you about what's going on. Kay sat down.
- 45:09Speaker 1: Seven minutes later, she was escorted away, and Moore was
- 45:12Speaker 1: on the phone with the sergeant. Probably one of the
- 45:15Speaker 1: least cooperative ones we have ever dealt with, he told Luong.
- 45:19Speaker 1: Kay wouldn't answer his questions. She would barely look at him.
- 45:23Speaker 1: When she started screaming about not wanting to be there,
- 45:25Speaker 1: Moore gave up. It was clear to him how deep
- 45:28Speaker 1: she was in. Her 17th birthday was the next day.
- 45:32Speaker 1: If she didn't get out of the life now, there
- 45:35Speaker 1: was a good chance she would spend her adult years
- 45:37Speaker 1: being arrested, Again and again. Like that's a good thing. Look,
- 45:45Speaker 1: a lot of people might not have ever been affected
- 45:46Speaker 1: by anything like this. Not have a family member get
- 45:49Speaker 1: caught up on drugs, become a prostitute. And God bless
- 45:52Speaker 1: you if you've never dealt with it. But for a
- 45:56Speaker 1: lot of us, a lot of people, we haven't been
- 45:59Speaker 1: so lucky. We've seen this shit on its face. We've
- 46:02Speaker 1: seen how brutal it is. We've seen what the life
- 46:05Speaker 1: does to people. Some of us have seen our own
- 46:08Speaker 1: family members overdose on drugs. Some of us have seen
- 46:11Speaker 1: family members die. Some of us have seen family members arrested.
- 46:17Speaker 1: And some, unfortunately, fallen into this life. But one thing
- 46:23Speaker 1: is certainly clear. This is a society problem. This is
- 46:27Speaker 1: not just a problem for the people dealing with it.
- 46:30Speaker 1: It is a problem for us as a society to tackle.
- 46:37Speaker 1: And once she turned 18, she could face fines of
- 46:40Speaker 1: up to $ 1, 000 or a maximum of six months in jail,
- 46:44Speaker 1: even if they knew she was being victimized. Again, that
- 46:47Speaker 1: has to stop in Las Vegas. These girls, women who
- 46:52Speaker 1: are victimized by pimps, they shouldn't be going to jail.
- 46:56Speaker 1: They should not be going to jail. And in fact,
- 46:59Speaker 1: I'm going to make a point of that during this
- 47:02Speaker 1: next election cycle to ask the people who are running
- 47:05Speaker 1: for office here locally, where they stand on all of this.
- 47:10Speaker 1: Because obviously the local media doesn't want to do it.
- 47:13Speaker 1: They're all in the bag. This is a good article
- 47:17Speaker 1: from the Washington Post, though I'll tell you that much.
- 47:19Speaker 1: As much as I break the Washington Post balls for
- 47:22Speaker 1: their nonsense, when they just drop the bullshit, drop the tribalism,
- 47:27Speaker 1: drop the division, drop the slamming and dunking the football
- 47:30Speaker 1: every time someone catches COVID. And let's get down to
- 47:34Speaker 1: issues that are important. Issues that affect us on a
- 47:38Speaker 1: daily basis. Issues that affect our lives. And this, my friends,
- 47:44Speaker 1: is certainly one of those issues. Just that weekend, Moore's
- 47:50Speaker 1: colleagues had found the teenager at Caesar's Palace who they'd
- 47:53Speaker 1: been arresting for solicitation since she was 14. As a minor,
- 47:58Speaker 1: her charges were dropped after six months. Because she had
- 48:01Speaker 1: turned 18 a few weeks earlier, her charges would now
- 48:04Speaker 1: go on her permanent record. showing up every time she
- 48:08Speaker 1: was background checked for an apartment or job for the
- 48:10Speaker 1: rest of her life. That's a problem. That is a
- 48:15Speaker 1: fucking problem, folks. So we put the scarlet letter on her?
- 48:20Speaker 1: We put the scarlet letter on these people, on these felons,
- 48:23Speaker 1: on these people who have served their time. Now they
- 48:25Speaker 1: can't get an apartment. Now they can't get a job.
- 48:27Speaker 1: So what do they do? Right back to the streets.
- 48:30Speaker 1: That's what they know. That's where they're comfortable. We ain't
- 48:33Speaker 1: giving them no other options, no other outs as a society.
- 48:35Speaker 1: So what do they do? They also found the 19-year-old
- 48:41Speaker 1: with braces working the casino floor. Her suspected trafficker was
- 48:45Speaker 1: there watching her every move with a loaded gun in
- 48:48Speaker 1: his underwear. Through tears, she gave detectives all the evidence
- 48:52Speaker 1: they needed to arrest him. Then, they jailed her too.
- 48:56Speaker 1: I mean, really? First of all, it's unfortunate that that
- 49:00Speaker 1: gun didn't go off and blow this dude's dick off.
- 49:02Speaker 1: Second off, they shouldn't have arrested her. Again, a new
- 49:06Speaker 1: facility where these people go, where they can deal with
- 49:10Speaker 1: the trauma for a week or so, talk to specialists
- 49:13Speaker 1: if they need medicine, get on medicine. What sort of
- 49:15Speaker 1: society are we? We're so quick to arrest people. We're
- 49:19Speaker 1: so quick to throw them in prison. But where are
- 49:22Speaker 1: we after that? We gotta step up our game. But
- 49:29Speaker 1: for Kay, there was still time. Moore told the sergeant
- 49:32Speaker 1: he'd try talking to her again in a few days.
- 49:35Speaker 1: Maybe once they were able to catch her trafficker, she
- 49:37Speaker 1: wouldn't be so scared. While Moore was with Kay, Luong
- 49:41Speaker 1: had been watching the security footage from the Motel 6.
- 49:45Speaker 1: He'd seen the 29-year-old and Kay move into the room
- 49:48Speaker 1: earlier in the day with two other girls and bags
- 49:51Speaker 1: and bags of clothing. It looked like they were moving
- 49:54Speaker 1: from city to city, and that's what they do. They'll
- 49:58Speaker 1: come to one city, hit the track, bounce to the
- 50:00Speaker 1: next city, get on the blade, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce,
- 50:04Speaker 1: try and stay off the radar, try not to stay
- 50:06Speaker 1: somewhere too long, and try not to get caught up
- 50:08Speaker 1: by Vice. You want to talk about a game of
- 50:13Speaker 1: cat and mouse, folks? And I know we talk about
- 50:15Speaker 1: the Epstein situation, and that's what we're focused on, right?
- 50:19Speaker 1: But in reality, the vast majority of trafficking situations are
- 50:24Speaker 1: not done at that level. It's right here in your face,
- 50:27Speaker 1: in your community, at the McDonald's, at the local grocery store,
- 50:31Speaker 1: everywhere you look. That's the real problem. At 10.37 that night,
- 50:39Speaker 1: the girls had left the room together. At 11.02, the
- 50:43Speaker 1: suspected trafficker had come out wearing an orange shirt. He
- 50:46Speaker 1: had driven away in a white Kia. Because there was
- 50:49Speaker 1: a warrant out for his arrest from California, the officers
- 50:53Speaker 1: had enough to detain him. All they had to do
- 50:55Speaker 1: now was wait for him to come back. You know, look,
- 51:02Speaker 1: these people, these men or women who engage in this
- 51:06Speaker 1: modern-day human slavery are literally the worst of the worst.
- 51:14Speaker 1: And there needs to be very, very stiff penalties for
- 51:16Speaker 1: anybody who is selling human flesh. We have mandatory penalties
- 51:21Speaker 1: for crack cocaine, 10 years federal prison. Telling me we
- 51:26Speaker 1: don't got mandatory sentences for human trafficking? Traffickers and their
- 51:34Speaker 1: customers know the vice unit is after them. Some nights,
- 51:37Speaker 1: detectives pose as teens selling sex in online ads to
- 51:41Speaker 1: catch buyers of children. They use female undercover detectives to
- 51:45Speaker 1: trick men paying for sex inside casinos or to gather
- 51:49Speaker 1: evidence against traffickers who don't know the woman they are
- 51:51Speaker 1: recruiting into their stable is an officer. But the majority
- 51:56Speaker 1: of the arrests they make involve potential trafficking victims. Low-hanging fruit, right?
- 52:03Speaker 1: I know it's sad to say, but that's what it
- 52:04Speaker 1: comes down to. They have a quota. They have a
- 52:07Speaker 1: number they have to meet. But arresting the victims here,
- 52:14Speaker 1: it's like arresting the drug addicts. It's all fine and well,
- 52:17Speaker 1: but what does it accomplish? If you want to get
- 52:21Speaker 1: rid of drugs, well, we all know prohibition is stupid,
- 52:24Speaker 1: so legalize them. But if you want to get rid
- 52:25Speaker 1: of drugs, you have to go after the people who
- 52:27Speaker 1: are trafficking the drugs, not the people who are using
- 52:30Speaker 1: the drugs. Police know these women, and children may be
- 52:41Speaker 1: violently punished by their traffickers for failing to detect that
- 52:45Speaker 1: their customer was actually a cop. They know only some
- 52:48Speaker 1: victims get connected to advocates, and even if they do,
- 52:52Speaker 1: they are often too afraid to talk. Officers go after
- 52:55Speaker 1: them anyway, in the name of discouraging human trafficking and prostitution,
- 53:00Speaker 1: and creating more leads to catch pimps. So, really what
- 53:04Speaker 1: it comes down to is their numbers, right? We want
- 53:07Speaker 1: to have a higher... arrest rate. So we're going to
- 53:10Speaker 1: arrest everybody. I'm not into it. I don't like it.
- 53:13Speaker 1: I think it's gross. And I really would like to
- 53:16Speaker 1: see the Metropolitan Police Department go about this a different way. Now,
- 53:22Speaker 1: we're going to be getting a new sheriff soon. And
- 53:27Speaker 1: I really am going to be interested to see where
- 53:29Speaker 1: these candidates line up when it comes to human trafficking.
- 53:33Speaker 1: I'm going to be going to some of these Local
- 53:36Speaker 1: debates and town halls... And I'm going to be asking
- 53:38Speaker 1: these questions... And they're going to have to give me
- 53:41Speaker 1: some answers folks... Because... I'm not sitting on the sidelines...
- 53:46Speaker 1: I'm not just going to sit here... While the whole
- 53:49Speaker 1: world crumbles around me... What kind of fucking world do
- 53:54Speaker 1: you want for your kids? You know it's funny... Because
- 53:56Speaker 1: I don't even have kids right? But I have nephews...
- 53:59Speaker 1: I have nieces... I have cousins... I have best friends
- 54:03Speaker 1: with children... I don't want them to have a world
- 54:06Speaker 1: like this. You just sit around and accept that this
- 54:09Speaker 1: shit goes on, shrug your shoulders, keep it moving to Starbucks.
- 54:14Speaker 1: Fuck that. Everyone got to get into the fight one
- 54:16Speaker 1: way or the other. And look, I don't think or
- 54:19Speaker 1: expect people to dive in and have, you know, their
- 54:22Speaker 1: own podcast about it. But, you know, when you're looking
- 54:26Speaker 1: at the candidates and you're going to vote in whatever
- 54:29Speaker 1: city you live in or country you live in, These
- 54:32Speaker 1: are the kind of questions that should be asked too, right?
- 54:34Speaker 1: Not just how high are the taxes going to be,
- 54:36Speaker 1: but we got to get into the nuances of this
- 54:39Speaker 1: because it seems like nobody cares. This isn't a national
- 54:43Speaker 1: topic of debate. In fact, when you bring it up online,
- 54:47Speaker 1: people start in with the politics, right? Oh, you're a QAnon.
- 54:55Speaker 1: Everyone's a human trafficker. Or, oh, you're drinking baby's blood
- 55:00Speaker 1: to stay young. You know, all kinds of wild shit.
- 55:03Speaker 1: When in reality, this is a big problem staring us
- 55:06Speaker 1: in the face. And it's not some elaborate conspiracy. It's
- 55:09Speaker 1: not some elaborate cabal doing it. It's in every city.
- 55:14Speaker 1: In every inner city. On all of these poor parts
- 55:17Speaker 1: of the neighborhoods, it's happening. The richer areas, it's happening too,
- 55:21Speaker 1: just on a different level with the escorts going to
- 55:23Speaker 1: the houses, not walking the beat. And yet, we act
- 55:30Speaker 1: like there's no problem here. like we can arrest our
- 55:33Speaker 1: way out of it. But by 3 a.m., the man
- 55:37Speaker 1: detectives were looking for still hadn't returned to the Motel
- 55:41Speaker 1: 6 parking lot. There were half a dozen police cars
- 55:44Speaker 1: waiting to block the white Kia from leaving once it
- 55:46Speaker 1: pulled in. The undercover who caught Kay earlier in the
- 55:50Speaker 1: night was parked at the front entrance, scanning every pedestrian
- 55:54Speaker 1: for an orange shirt. When a judge granted a search warrant,
- 55:58Speaker 1: Officers piled into the motel room, looking for evidence of
- 56:02Speaker 1: what the 29-year-old had been doing with Kay and the
- 56:05Speaker 1: other two girls. Pretty glad to see that at least
- 56:08Speaker 1: the judge had the sense to grant the warrant. They
- 56:12Speaker 1: dumped the contents of duffel bags, backpacks, and plastic bins
- 56:16Speaker 1: onto the beds. There were little piles of clothes that
- 56:19Speaker 1: were little more than strips of fabric, covered in lace
- 56:22Speaker 1: and leopard print, rhinestones, and dollar signs. Besides the maxi
- 56:26Speaker 1: pads and the hair ties were six-inch stilettos and boxes
- 56:30Speaker 1: of condoms. A pink laptop was adorned with a visitor
- 56:34Speaker 1: badge from a juvenile jail and a sticker that read,
- 56:37Speaker 1: Keep Going. Absolutely fucking sickening to read this. And this
- 56:44Speaker 1: person who was trafficking them? I'll gladly have 15 minutes
- 56:50Speaker 1: alone with them. If you want to save some dollars...
- 56:54Speaker 1: government in Las Vegas you guys could just set it
- 56:58Speaker 1: up throw me an old boy in a ring or
- 56:59Speaker 1: a cage without any supervision for 15 or 20 and
- 57:03Speaker 1: we'll see what's up we'll see how bad that motherfucker
- 57:06Speaker 1: is then a sticker from a juvenile detention center and
- 57:12Speaker 1: a sign right next to it that says keep going
- 57:14Speaker 1: oh we'll keep going oh I'll keep going alright until
- 57:18Speaker 1: you're not breathing anymore you sick fucking bastard unbelievable these
- 57:23Speaker 1: people the brazenness of these people. And man, I'll tell
- 57:29Speaker 1: you what, I am all about being a peaceful person.
- 57:33Speaker 1: As far as violence goes, I am so against violence,
- 57:36Speaker 1: it's not even funny. But guys like this, they need
- 57:39Speaker 1: to be taught a fucking real lesson. And hell, fuck me,
- 57:43Speaker 1: forget me. Throw them in a cell with, you know,
- 57:48Speaker 1: I don't know, insert fighter here. And let that be
- 57:52Speaker 1: their punishment before they go to prison. Maybe they'll think
- 57:55Speaker 1: twice if they got a fight with Jon Jones. Or
- 57:59Speaker 1: if they got a hop in the ring with Dustin
- 58:01Speaker 1: Poirier for a quick 20 minutes. Or, if these kids
- 58:05Speaker 1: are kidnapped, give the person who kidnapped them to the
- 58:09Speaker 1: kid's family and let the family have 15 or 20
- 58:11Speaker 1: with them. You want to talk about barbaric? I could
- 58:15Speaker 1: get down on those levels too, right? I could go
- 58:17Speaker 1: from Sun Tzu to Niccolo Machiavelli in a heartbeat. We
- 58:25Speaker 1: as a society have to be a lot rougher on
- 58:29Speaker 1: human traffickers. They'd found Kay's Instagram accounts too. Here was
- 58:39Speaker 1: the 16-year-old in another motel room and another and another
- 58:43Speaker 1: and she was in those stilettos, her heels clicking on
- 58:46Speaker 1: concrete sidewalks. About to go get my daddy's bag, she
- 58:51Speaker 1: wrote besides a bag of cash emoji. She described herself
- 58:55Speaker 1: as unlockable. Never be friends with a square, she warned.
- 58:59Speaker 1: And this is all brainwashing, programming done by the trafficker.
- 59:04Speaker 1: You really think a 16-year-old girl runs around talking and
- 59:06Speaker 1: thinking like that? That's learned behavior, my friends. And these
- 59:10Speaker 1: fucking human traffickers are the worst of the worst. Not
- 59:15Speaker 1: much gets my blood pressure up anymore. You know, we
- 59:18Speaker 1: live in a world filled with misery, all kinds of
- 59:21Speaker 1: sick shit. But this right here in my own backyard?
- 59:26Speaker 1: Absolutely unacceptable. The detectives didn't know how long Kay had
- 59:33Speaker 1: been with this trafficker, who bragged on his own Instagram
- 59:36Speaker 1: about flying to the money, in a state near you.
- 59:39Speaker 1: It's a great day for a pee, he wrote, using
- 59:41Speaker 1: the slang for a pimp. Oh yeah, you're a pimp, alright.
- 59:45Speaker 1: You're a real pimp, you punk bitch. His record showed
- 59:50Speaker 1: he'd served seven years in prison for threatening a convenience
- 59:53Speaker 1: store cashier with a BB gun until they handed over
- 59:56Speaker 1: cash and cigarettes. In March, a year after he was released...
- 1:00:01Speaker 1: he was arrested for possessing a gun. His bail was
- 1:00:04Speaker 1: set at $ 35, 000, then dropped to zero. A California judge
- 1:00:08Speaker 1: released him, ordering him to find a job and regularly
- 1:00:12Speaker 1: report to a parole officer. So the trafficked victims get
- 1:00:17Speaker 1: treated worse than the traffickers. You see how this all works?
- 1:00:21Speaker 1: See how the system's ass backwards? See why it's so
- 1:00:24Speaker 1: fucking broken? Within two weeks, he disappeared. Hey, Sarge, a
- 1:00:33Speaker 1: detective said over the radio just before 5 a.m., there's
- 1:00:36Speaker 1: a Honda coming in. A red Accord was rolling into
- 1:00:40Speaker 1: the lot. It stopped 30 yards away from the door
- 1:00:43Speaker 1: to Kay's motel room, which was surrounded by police. I
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: think I saw an orange shirt, a detective announced, but
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: then the Honda was whipping out of the parking spot
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: in reverse. The driver gunned it. He swerved around the
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: uniformed officers in their marked SUVs. He passed the undercovers
- 1:01:02Speaker 1: waiting in their sedans. He passed the sergeant and the
- 1:01:05Speaker 1: detective who had arrested Kay. Within seconds, he was out
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: of the parking lot. So this dude saw the deal,
- 1:01:13Speaker 1: saw the writing on the wall, and got ghost, right?
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: He was like, fuck this. The Jakes are here. I'm bouncing.
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: I'm getting away. But guess what, asshole, idiot? You're not
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: getting away. This isn't anywhere else. This isn't Los Angeles.
- 1:01:27Speaker 1: You're dealing with Metro Police. You're lucky they don't kill
- 1:01:30Speaker 1: you when they pull you over, bro. Two officers followed,
- 1:01:37Speaker 1: but there was already a cloud of dust in the
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: Honda's wake. They were ordered not to pursue. What? Why
- 1:01:47Speaker 1: were they ordered not to pursue? Oh, that's right. Because
- 1:01:49Speaker 1: Sheriff Joe Lombardo, here in Las Vegas, Nevada, is a worthless...
- 1:01:54Speaker 1: Worthless human being. The likelihood of a crash was too high,
- 1:02:00Speaker 1: Leong said, and without the 16-year-old being willing to talk,
- 1:02:03Speaker 1: they might not have enough evidence to charge sex trafficking.
- 1:02:07Speaker 1: We'd been expecting the white Kia, Leong sighed. Well, you
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: gotta adjust on the fly sometimes, right? The detectives who
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: had seen inside the Honda were certain. The driver was
- 1:02:20Speaker 1: the man they'd been looking for. If he'd been out
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: searching for Kay... Now he knew she'd been caught. He
- 1:02:26Speaker 1: would have no way of knowing the police found him
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: through a motel card. It looked like Kay had given
- 1:02:31Speaker 1: him up. But it wasn't just him the detectives saw
- 1:02:35Speaker 1: inside the car. Riding in the passenger seat, they said,
- 1:02:38Speaker 1: was another underage girl. Jesus. So, another underage girl's in
- 1:02:46Speaker 1: the car. This guy's wanted for a warrant, violent crimes, etc., etc.,
- 1:02:52Speaker 1: already has K out on the track and the police
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: don't pursue him. I bet you if he had crack
- 1:02:59Speaker 1: in his pocket, they would have. Bet you if he
- 1:03:01Speaker 1: had drugs in his pocket, they would have. But not
- 1:03:04Speaker 1: human trafficking. Let me tell you what, let me be
- 1:03:07Speaker 1: very clear. If the cops are going to engage in
- 1:03:12Speaker 1: a chase of a criminal, one that has an underage
- 1:03:15Speaker 1: victim in his car and one that has violated another
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: underage victim, I would think that that's the person to
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: engage in a chase. Where is my child? Eleven hours
- 1:03:26Speaker 1: after Kay's arrest and request to call her mom, the
- 1:03:30Speaker 1: 16-year-old's mother received a text. It had her daughter's name
- 1:03:34Speaker 1: on it and the time of a court hearing. She
- 1:03:36Speaker 1: called the number, desperate to find out what was going on.
- 1:03:41Speaker 1: She hadn't heard from her only child since 2019. Kay's mother,
- 1:03:46Speaker 1: who the Post is not naming to protect Kay's identity,
- 1:03:49Speaker 1: said she was told the hearing was already over and
- 1:03:52Speaker 1: someone would call her soon 30 minutes later, Detective Moore
- 1:03:56Speaker 1: was on the line explaining her daughter had been arrested
- 1:03:59Speaker 1: for solicitation. Why are you explaining that? You should be
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: explaining that your daughter was caught up in a trafficking situation.
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: And we'd love to have your daughter's help. And if
- 1:04:09Speaker 1: there's any way you can get her to talk to us,
- 1:04:11Speaker 1: we'd be over the moon joyful about it. She would try,
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: in an interview, to describe how it felt to get
- 1:04:20Speaker 1: that news. Relief that she is alive. And a prayer
- 1:04:24Speaker 1: for that, she said. And then a sigh of relief.
- 1:04:27Speaker 1: And then, back to reality. What the heck is going on?
- 1:04:31Speaker 1: And where is my child? All over again. She didn't
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: explain to the detective how their family had gotten to
- 1:04:38Speaker 1: this place. How the daughter she knew wasn't a criminal
- 1:04:42Speaker 1: or a victim either. She was the energetic girl who
- 1:04:45Speaker 1: had grown up dancing to Michael Jackson's Beat It and
- 1:04:48Speaker 1: saying one day she was going to marry him. She
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: was that girl who cared about cheerleading so much, she
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: couldn't bear it when her team finished in second place.
- 1:04:58Speaker 1: She had taken singing lessons and etiquette lessons, had listened
- 1:05:01Speaker 1: to her mom go on and on about how to
- 1:05:04Speaker 1: lead instead of follow, how to make your own way,
- 1:05:08Speaker 1: how just because Kay was slight and short didn't mean
- 1:05:11Speaker 1: she should get pushed around. It was just the two
- 1:05:14Speaker 1: of them, mother and daughter, and then it became mother, daughter,
- 1:05:19Speaker 1: and whatever seemed to be occupying Kay on her phone.
- 1:05:23Speaker 1: She was sucking it up every day like a smoothie
- 1:05:25Speaker 1: from Jamba Juice, with an extra energy boost, her mother said.
- 1:05:29Speaker 1: And folks, this is why I go crazy about the
- 1:05:32Speaker 1: social media grooming. That's how it's happening to these kids.
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: These pimps are finding these girls on social media, and
- 1:05:38Speaker 1: they're grooming them. And then you have a situation like Kay's.
- 1:05:46Speaker 1: She knew kids mimicked what they saw on TV. But
- 1:05:50Speaker 1: this wasn't Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel anymore. On Instagram,
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: it was Fashion Nova outfits and twerking on loop and
- 1:05:58Speaker 1: the endless feed of all the things she didn't want
- 1:06:01Speaker 1: her daughter aspiring to. They're bending over, they're putting their
- 1:06:05Speaker 1: songs on, and some of them are still looking like
- 1:06:08Speaker 1: little kids with nothing to shake, her mother said. But
- 1:06:11Speaker 1: you have guys in their DMs that are as old
- 1:06:13Speaker 1: as their parents talking to them about things that were
- 1:06:17Speaker 1: not even on their minds. Big facts. Big facts. There
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: are a lot of sick fucking people out there. And
- 1:06:27Speaker 1: if you have children, I would be safeguarding the internet
- 1:06:29Speaker 1: like it's nobody's business. Because you really don't know what's
- 1:06:33Speaker 1: going on out there. She didn't tell the detective about
- 1:06:40Speaker 1: the day she came home and Kay was gone. Or...
- 1:06:43Speaker 1: The first call saying her daughter had been found in
- 1:06:45Speaker 1: San Diego. Or... how the social workers there decided to
- 1:06:49Speaker 1: release Kay to her estranged father instead of her. Days
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: after that, she said, her 15-year-old was gone again. She
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: ran away from there, and I've been looking for her
- 1:07:01Speaker 1: ever since, her mother said. I mean, can you imagine?
- 1:07:04Speaker 1: Think about her mom for a minute. You have a
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: pandemic raging, your daughter's missing, all sorts of insecurity and
- 1:07:11Speaker 1: uncertainty in the world. This mother must have been a
- 1:07:15Speaker 1: A walking disaster. I can't even imagine the pain. An
- 1:07:21Speaker 1: entire pandemic with no access to your child wasn't something
- 1:07:25Speaker 1: she could explain in a phone call, even if more
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: had asked. All she wanted to know was when she
- 1:07:31Speaker 1: could speak to her daughter. After months apart, they were
- 1:07:34Speaker 1: allowed to talk for 10 minutes a day. 10 minutes
- 1:07:37Speaker 1: of Kay sobbing, begging her mom to get her out
- 1:07:40Speaker 1: so she didn't spend her 17th birthday in jail. She
- 1:07:43Speaker 1: has been very traumatized, her mother said. Very mentally drained
- 1:07:48Speaker 1: and not able to properly understand what's going on. They
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: should have released her to the custody of her mother
- 1:07:53Speaker 1: on her own recognizance right away. Point blank period, done.
- 1:07:58Speaker 1: Let her go. Her mom's willing to collect her. We
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: don't need her in jail. She doesn't need to pay
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: a price. And by the way, her record should be expunged.
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: She's under 18. Her mom couldn't understand it either. If
- 1:08:13Speaker 1: the detective believed Kay had been trafficked, then why was
- 1:08:16Speaker 1: her daughter in jail? They're making them feel like criminals,
- 1:08:19Speaker 1: she said, treating them like little inmates. And that's not right.
- 1:08:25Speaker 1: She's right about that. They are being treated like inmates,
- 1:08:27Speaker 1: and they should not be. They should be treated as
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: people who have been victimized. The man in charge of
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: the juvenile detention center knows it isn't right. They're victims
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: of a crime, said Jack Martin, Clark County's Director of
- 1:08:43Speaker 1: Juvenile Justice. You get your stereo stolen, I'm not bringing
- 1:08:47Speaker 1: you in. I would absolutely prefer we do not bring
- 1:08:51Speaker 1: them here. Hallelujah, Jack Martin. A guy that gets it.
- 1:08:57Speaker 1: These are victims. So if I get... assaulted and robbed
- 1:09:01Speaker 1: I go to jail too stupid it's a dumb law
- 1:09:04Speaker 1: it's ridiculous the judge who has overseen these cases for
- 1:09:09Speaker 1: 16 years believes the current approach to handling them doesn't
- 1:09:13Speaker 1: work for two thirds of the children we are failing
- 1:09:16Speaker 1: said judge William Voigt totally failing Yet every week, it
- 1:09:21Speaker 1: happens all over again. A teenager, sometimes two or three,
- 1:09:25Speaker 1: falls for an undercover detective's offers and ends up locked
- 1:09:28Speaker 1: behind barbed wire. Citing the pandemic, Clark County officials would
- 1:09:33Speaker 1: not allow a reporter inside the facility. They declined multiple
- 1:09:37Speaker 1: requests for photos of the cells where sex-trafficked children are held.
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: Two years ago, Nevada lawmakers declared that starting in July 2022,
- 1:09:46Speaker 1: minors can no longer be placed in detention facilities... for
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: engaging in prostitution or solicitation. But in Las Vegas, there
- 1:09:56Speaker 1: is no solidified plan to stop doing so. Yeah, there
- 1:10:00Speaker 1: needs to be. And again, I'm going to make it
- 1:10:02Speaker 1: a point of contention during this upcoming election season to
- 1:10:05Speaker 1: point this out. We need to fix this. And you
- 1:10:10Speaker 1: guys know my saying. I'm not going to sit here
- 1:10:12Speaker 1: and talk about everybody else's problems in their yard with
- 1:10:15Speaker 1: my yard a mess. So bear down. Firing off some emails,
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: we're going to be firing off some phone calls, doing
- 1:10:22Speaker 1: some in-person visits. We're going to find out what's going
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: on here. People have to understand, these children are being
- 1:10:31Speaker 1: sexually assaulted, said Bridget Duffy, Chief of the District Attorney's
- 1:10:34Speaker 1: Juvenile Division. If you're going to create a system where
- 1:10:38Speaker 1: you do not have a facility to get them treatment
- 1:10:40Speaker 1: that is also locked, you have to be okay with that.
- 1:10:43Speaker 1: I don't know how anybody could be okay with that. Exactly.
- 1:10:47Speaker 1: That's why, again, I'm sitting here talking about a new
- 1:10:49Speaker 1: facility to be built. Not rocket science. I'm just some moron.
- 1:10:52Speaker 1: A lot of people out there making a ton of money,
- 1:10:56Speaker 1: a lot more money than me. They're obviously not earning it. Survivors, advocates,
- 1:11:04Speaker 1: and public defenders say jailing the kids is hurting them more.
- 1:11:07Speaker 1: Police and prosecutors say taking them home or putting them
- 1:11:10Speaker 1: in an unlocked shelter is only setting them up to
- 1:11:14Speaker 1: run away again. But all sides long agreed there is
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: a third option, one they believe could actually help. A
- 1:11:22Speaker 1: specially built safe house or receiving center where children could
- 1:11:26Speaker 1: be taken at all hours and stay for as long
- 1:11:29Speaker 1: as they need, getting intervention from trained social workers, medical
- 1:11:33Speaker 1: attention from trauma-informed caregivers, and the kind of support that
- 1:11:38Speaker 1: might persuade them to leave their traffickers. Bingo, 100%, this
- 1:11:43Speaker 1: is the way, right? This is the path to victory, folks. Resources, facilities,
- 1:11:49Speaker 1: helping people. Yet after years of anti-trafficking task force and coalitions,
- 1:11:54Speaker 1: academic studies and advertising campaigns, lawsuits and changes, Nevada has
- 1:12:00Speaker 1: yet to build anything like a receiving center. In the
- 1:12:03Speaker 1: office of Judge Voi, there are poster-sized blueprints of the
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: one he and others pushed in the late 2000s. He
- 1:12:12Speaker 1: couldn't get the funding to make it a reality. When
- 1:12:15Speaker 1: they walk in, they feel like they're special. That's how
- 1:12:18Speaker 1: we designed it. This is where we wanted them to
- 1:12:20Speaker 1: be while we figure out what to do for these kids,
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: Voice said, and it's still never been done. All right,
- 1:12:26Speaker 1: so all of you rich, loudmouth, virtue-signaling assholes out there,
- 1:12:30Speaker 1: if any of you are listening, step up to the plate.
- 1:12:34Speaker 1: You got some money? Step up to the plate. Build
- 1:12:37Speaker 1: a facility. Help these people. Vegas does have the Embracing Project,
- 1:12:45Speaker 1: a drop-in center run by a non-profit where sexually exploited
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: children who live locally can go to school, get therapy,
- 1:12:52Speaker 1: and spend time with advocates who understand them. But police
- 1:12:56Speaker 1: won't bring kids they arrest directly to a place they
- 1:12:59Speaker 1: can just leave. And I understand that. That is an issue.
- 1:13:04Speaker 1: There's no doubt. So it needs to be a facility
- 1:13:06Speaker 1: that's geared towards this specifically with all of the professionals
- 1:13:10Speaker 1: in place. The closest the city has come to a
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: long-term answer is a plot of sand and bushes 30
- 1:13:18Speaker 1: minutes away in Boulder City, Nevada. It will one day
- 1:13:21Speaker 1: be a site of long-term residential center for trafficked children,
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: an oasis of comfortable bedrooms, meditation gardens, and walls intended
- 1:13:30Speaker 1: to keep kids in and traffickers out. The non-profit raising
- 1:13:35Speaker 1: money for it is St. Jude's Ranch for Children, went
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: to the casinos and the Nevada Resorts Association for help.
- 1:13:42Speaker 1: Caesars Entertainment donated $ 1 million. No other casino has contributed.
- 1:13:47Speaker 1: Construction on the project has yet to begin. These fucking casinos.
- 1:13:52Speaker 1: Let me tell you something about these corporate-run casinos. Like
- 1:13:54Speaker 1: the MGM especially. They are scandalous, scummy, and they don't
- 1:14:00Speaker 1: give a fuck about people. The way they treat their
- 1:14:03Speaker 1: own people is gross. And the fact that none of
- 1:14:06Speaker 1: them besides Caesars has stepped up here is an absolute atrocity.
- 1:14:15Speaker 1: With the mandate to stop jailing victims by the summer
- 1:14:18Speaker 1: of 2022 looming, the state hired Esther Rodriguez-Brown, the Embracing
- 1:14:23Speaker 1: Projects founder, to come up with a plan. Last fall,
- 1:14:27Speaker 1: she and dozens of others delivered a report to lawmakers
- 1:14:30Speaker 1: laying out the need, once again, for a receiving center.
- 1:14:34Speaker 1: Clark County officials estimated it would cost $ 15. 5 million a
- 1:14:37Speaker 1: year to run one after it was built. Rodriguez- report
- 1:14:43Speaker 1: pointed to georgia where a 24 7 receiving center provides
- 1:14:47Speaker 1: housing school medical care and therapy for up to 20
- 1:14:51Speaker 1: sexually exploited kids at a time it costs 2.5 million
- 1:14:55Speaker 1: a year we can't come up with 2.5 million dollars
- 1:15:00Speaker 1: can someone refresh my memory how much one of those
- 1:15:03Speaker 1: smart bombs costs In Nevada, $ 2. 5 million is less than
- 1:15:09Speaker 1: half of 1% of what the state made in gaming
- 1:15:13Speaker 1: taxes in fiscal year 2020. It's what casinos in Clark
- 1:15:17Speaker 1: County can make in just two hours. See my problem
- 1:15:20Speaker 1: here yet, folks? See what's going on? The greed? The corruption?
- 1:15:26Speaker 1: There is a lot of money in this city, Rodriguez
- 1:15:28Speaker 1: Brown said. I really don't know why we are still
- 1:15:31Speaker 1: in this situation. This spring, lawmakers passed their plan. declaring
- 1:15:36Speaker 1: the state should create receiving centers. The bill came with
- 1:15:39Speaker 1: no new funding. Instead, it said police no longer have
- 1:15:42Speaker 1: to change their practices by next summer. They can keep
- 1:15:46Speaker 1: putting victims in jail centers at least until July 23rd. Imagine,
- 1:15:51Speaker 1: that's what they came up with. Instead of just building
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: these facilities, this is what they came up with. The
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: camera turned on and Kay appeared on the screen. A
- 1:16:02Speaker 1: gray mask hung loosely on her face. She'd been locked
- 1:16:05Speaker 1: up for 85 hours. She'd spent her 17th birthday in detention.
- 1:16:10Speaker 1: Because of COVID restrictions, she could meet with her public defender,
- 1:16:16Speaker 1: probation officer, and advocates only by phone. Now she was
- 1:16:22Speaker 1: videoconferencing into the court hearing that would determine what happened
- 1:16:25Speaker 1: to her next. I mean, imagine? That's the child down
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: there in the corner, right? Asked Judge Gerald Hardcastle. He
- 1:16:33Speaker 1: was sitting in an empty courtroom looking at Kay and
- 1:16:36Speaker 1: all the lawyers and caseworkers each in their own square
- 1:16:39Speaker 1: on a screen. Kay's mother was online too, watching from California.
- 1:16:44Speaker 1: Good afternoon, the judge asked. How are you? She lifted
- 1:16:48Speaker 1: her hand to wave. No one at the jail unmuted
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: her mic so she could answer him. She stayed on
- 1:16:55Speaker 1: mute while the adults began to talk about what was
- 1:16:57Speaker 1: best for her, mentioning forms and agreements, precedent and policies.
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: The judge asked Kay if she knew what was going on. No,
- 1:17:06Speaker 1: she said, and then, her attorney recalled later, Kay started
- 1:17:10Speaker 1: to cry. Look, man, this has to be such a
- 1:17:14Speaker 1: harrowing experience. Can you imagine? They explained to her that
- 1:17:19Speaker 1: she would be sent back to California and could not
- 1:17:22Speaker 1: return to Nevada without parental supervision. She was ordered to
- 1:17:26Speaker 1: stay away from places or persons involving prostitution. There were
- 1:17:30Speaker 1: the instructions that had been given to hundreds of trafficked
- 1:17:33Speaker 1: children before her. Some returned home and stayed there. They
- 1:17:37Speaker 1: connected with advocates, older sex trafficking survivors, or parents who
- 1:17:41Speaker 1: took classes on how to care for their victimized children.
- 1:17:45Speaker 1: There were girls who graduated high school and college and
- 1:17:48Speaker 1: who went on to raise awareness about this issue or
- 1:17:51Speaker 1: to live a life where they would never have to
- 1:17:53Speaker 1: think about it again. And that's the good side, right?
- 1:17:56Speaker 1: That's the bonus. That's the plus. That's what we're all
- 1:17:59Speaker 1: hoping for. That's what we all want. That's what we
- 1:18:01Speaker 1: should strive for. And that's why the resources should be
- 1:18:04Speaker 1: put in place. On the flip side, other girls disappeared
- 1:18:11Speaker 1: within days. The adults handling Kay's case didn't know how
- 1:18:15Speaker 1: she would end up. The California social workers assigned to
- 1:18:19Speaker 1: her were still deciding whether it was in Kay's best
- 1:18:21Speaker 1: interest to be reunited with her mother. But without a
- 1:18:25Speaker 1: receiving center in Las Vegas, there was no place for
- 1:18:28Speaker 1: Kate to stay while they figured it out. Again, another problem.
- 1:18:32Speaker 1: We can't even have a place for these kids to stay.
- 1:18:36Speaker 1: Unless it's jail? With all of the money in the
- 1:18:40Speaker 1: state of Nevada, especially in Las Vegas, this is completely unacceptable. Instead,
- 1:18:49Speaker 1: she was likely to end up in jail. up in
- 1:18:50Speaker 1: foster care a group home or a temporary shelter back
- 1:18:53Speaker 1: in California where there are a few options for housing
- 1:18:57Speaker 1: traffic children even in Los Angeles County which receives more
- 1:19:01Speaker 1: than 900 reports of potential child sex trafficking a year
- 1:19:05Speaker 1: only two group homes provide focus exclusively on On caring
- 1:19:09Speaker 1: for exploited kids. They can house a total of 18 children.
- 1:19:13Speaker 1: How many people live in Los Angeles again? How many
- 1:19:16Speaker 1: rich people are in Los Angeles again? How many rich
- 1:19:19Speaker 1: virtue signaling Hollywood stars telling us how bad we are
- 1:19:23Speaker 1: there again? Oh yeah, that's right. Where are all of
- 1:19:26Speaker 1: these loud mouths? Where's Silicon Valley? Where are all of
- 1:19:30Speaker 1: these virtue signalers? Kay begged the judge to let her
- 1:19:35Speaker 1: be with her mom. I can't stand this, she cried.
- 1:19:38Speaker 1: Don't I get to have a say? The judge told
- 1:19:41Speaker 1: her he had to follow the law, and after a
- 1:19:43Speaker 1: few minutes, the screen shut off. Kay spent six more
- 1:19:47Speaker 1: nights in a cell. She never told Detective Moore or
- 1:19:50Speaker 1: his partner anything about the man who they believe had
- 1:19:52Speaker 1: trafficked her, and then evaded arrest at the Motel 6 stakeout.
- 1:19:57Speaker 1: And Moore never told Kay, her lawyer, her probation officer,
- 1:20:01Speaker 1: or her mother that this armed and dangerous man might
- 1:20:04Speaker 1: believe Kay had ratted him out to the police. Within
- 1:20:08Speaker 1: a week, the detective would close the case. One of
- 1:20:11Speaker 1: 14 trafficked children the team dealt with that month. And
- 1:20:15Speaker 1: that is just the cases reported. Just the ones that
- 1:20:17Speaker 1: they caught. Kay's suspected trafficker, meanwhile, was live streaming on
- 1:20:23Speaker 1: Instagram saying, Hurry up and get back. Bring that ass home.
- 1:20:27Speaker 1: You're taking too long. On her ninth day in jail,
- 1:20:30Speaker 1: Kay was given new clothes to wear. Her phone was
- 1:20:33Speaker 1: returned to her. Two probation officers drove her to the airport.
- 1:20:36Speaker 1: and escorted her inside. The terminals were filled with slot machines,
- 1:20:41Speaker 1: giving Torres one last taste of Las Vegas. Since she
- 1:20:45Speaker 1: had arrived, Kay had been sold to adults who sexually
- 1:20:47Speaker 1: abused her. She had been tricked by police officers who
- 1:20:51Speaker 1: claimed to be helping her. She had been imprisoned by
- 1:20:53Speaker 1: authorities who didn't believe she belonged in jail. Now, Nevada
- 1:20:57Speaker 1: was sending her away, no longer responsible for what happened
- 1:21:01Speaker 1: to her next. Gross. Shameful behavior on the part of
- 1:21:05Speaker 1: my home state, the state I love, by the way,
- 1:21:08Speaker 1: and my city. I'm not shocked, honestly, though, because the
- 1:21:13Speaker 1: Metropolitan Police Department, they gotta get their shit together in general.
- 1:21:19Speaker 1: Kay placed her items on the security belt. Above her head,
- 1:21:23Speaker 1: multiple TV screens flashed a message listing the phone number
- 1:21:27Speaker 1: for the human trafficking hotline. Help, the signs promised, is available. Yeah,
- 1:21:35Speaker 1: not so much, huh? Pretty sobering article, folks, and pretty long.
- 1:21:41Speaker 1: You know, I usually don't like to get into those
- 1:21:42Speaker 1: long articles, but I thought this was a good add-on
- 1:21:44Speaker 1: to the catalog. Shows you a lot of what's going
- 1:21:47Speaker 1: on here in Las Vegas and elsewhere. It's not just
- 1:21:50Speaker 1: here in Vegas. It's everywhere. And instead of arresting these women,
- 1:21:54Speaker 1: these girls, these children, we need to have resources built
- 1:21:58Speaker 1: for them. And unless we do that, We will stay
- 1:22:04Speaker 1: stuck in this vicious cycle. If you'd like to contact me,
- 1:22:08Speaker 1: you can do that at bobbycappucci at protonmail.com. That's B-O-B-B-Y-C-A-P-U-C-C-I
- 1:22:16Speaker 1: at protonmail.com. You can also find me on Twitter at
- 1:22:20Speaker 1: B-O-B-B-Y underscore C-A-P-U-C-C-I. All of the links that go with
- 1:22:26Speaker 1: this episode can be found in the description box. All right, folks,
- 1:22:31Speaker 1: I'll be back later on and we'll pick up. What's up, everyone?
- 1:22:35Speaker 1: And welcome back to the program. On this episode, we're
- 1:22:39Speaker 1: going to talk about this bonehead, this rapper named Chopper,
- 1:22:43Speaker 1: who just got arrested for sex trafficking. This dude obviously
- 1:22:48Speaker 1: was using Instagram to try and find girls to work
- 1:22:51Speaker 1: as prostitutes for him. And well, he ended up messaging
- 1:22:55Speaker 1: a undercover officer here in Las Vegas. And it threw
- 1:22:59Speaker 1: his whole entire scheme, his whole plot, right into turmoil.
- 1:23:04Speaker 1: And I say, good. Another disgusting son of a bitch
- 1:23:08Speaker 1: who thinks quote-unquote pimping girls is cool. What an absolute moron.
- 1:23:15Speaker 1: Hopefully this guy gets the whole entire book thrown at
- 1:23:18Speaker 1: him and hopefully he goes to prison for a long time.
- 1:23:22Speaker 1: You can't get out. You can't be out here human
- 1:23:24Speaker 1: trafficking people, selling people like they're commodities with no repercussions.
- 1:23:30Speaker 1: And then these pimps, these dudes are they're bad news.
- 1:23:33Speaker 1: They take all the money from these girls, beat them,
- 1:23:36Speaker 1: brand them. force them to go out and have sex
- 1:23:39Speaker 1: with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, a lot
- 1:23:42Speaker 1: of times against their will, and then let's not even
- 1:23:44Speaker 1: talk about the Stockholm Syndrome. How many times do you
- 1:23:48Speaker 1: see it? You have a pimp out here who religiously
- 1:23:52Speaker 1: beats on the girl, and there's a fight that breaks
- 1:23:55Speaker 1: out with the pimp and someone else or whatever, and
- 1:23:58Speaker 1: the girl who gets beat all the time jumps in
- 1:24:00Speaker 1: and tries to help the pimp. That's because of Stockholm Syndrome.
- 1:24:06Speaker 1: And that's what these guys do. It's obviously not on
- 1:24:09Speaker 1: the level of Epstein or, you know, some of the
- 1:24:12Speaker 1: other stuff we talk about. But when we do talk
- 1:24:15Speaker 1: about human trafficking, this makes up the bulk of it, folks.
- 1:24:18Speaker 1: People exactly like this guy. And it's in every city,
- 1:24:22Speaker 1: every town, every little village even. If you have access
- 1:24:26Speaker 1: to the Internet, these people have access to your children.
- 1:24:30Speaker 1: We've talked about it. a lot about how the internet
- 1:24:33Speaker 1: is being used by not only human traffickers, but the
- 1:24:37Speaker 1: drug cartels to help with the drug trafficking. So if
- 1:24:41Speaker 1: you're not a hip to what your kids are doing
- 1:24:44Speaker 1: on the internet, you better get hip to it. Now,
- 1:24:46Speaker 1: this wasn't a kid, obviously it was an undercover agent,
- 1:24:50Speaker 1: but this could have easily been a 17 year old girl,
- 1:24:52Speaker 1: 18 year old girl, whatever. Oh, Chopper, the rapper, wants
- 1:24:57Speaker 1: me to come and be a prostitute for him. Oh,
- 1:25:00Speaker 1: and I'm sure it's not even that story to begin with, right? Oh,
- 1:25:02Speaker 1: he's in love with me. Oh, I'm going to go
- 1:25:04Speaker 1: and be with my new boyfriend, Chopper. But the reality
- 1:25:07Speaker 1: ends up being something completely different. Dude puts you out
- 1:25:11Speaker 1: on the track, beats you, and then takes all of
- 1:25:13Speaker 1: your money. Now, I have no problem with people who
- 1:25:16Speaker 1: want to perform sex work. It's not my business, okay?
- 1:25:21Speaker 1: It's not my business. If somebody chooses to perform sex work,
- 1:25:25Speaker 1: then hey, good for you. You're an adult. As long
- 1:25:29Speaker 1: as whatever's going on is between consenting adults, I don't care.
- 1:25:33Speaker 1: It's not my business. The second it's not consenting adults
- 1:25:37Speaker 1: and it's human trafficking and it's this sort of shit,
- 1:25:41Speaker 1: it's my business. So let's dive into this article from
- 1:25:45Speaker 1: TMZ and let's see what the rapper Chopper has going on. Headline.
- 1:25:52Speaker 1: MTV's Making the Band Chopper arrested for sex trafficking. Former
- 1:25:59Speaker 1: MTV Making the Band star Chopper has been busted for
- 1:26:02Speaker 1: sex trafficking with law enforcement accusing him of being a pimp.
- 1:26:08Speaker 1: Chopper was arrested earlier this month in Maryland and he's
- 1:26:11Speaker 1: being extradited to Las Vegas to face sex trafficking charges
- 1:26:15Speaker 1: in Sin City. Hell, maybe I should go to that.
- 1:26:17Speaker 1: When he's arraigned, maybe I should go down to the
- 1:26:19Speaker 1: courtroom and get some live, a little live content for us.
- 1:26:23Speaker 1: We'll see when it happens and stuff and see what
- 1:26:25Speaker 1: my schedule is like. But I want to start doing
- 1:26:28Speaker 1: that a little more often, getting down to the courthouse
- 1:26:31Speaker 1: and seeing how things work for myself from a first
- 1:26:34Speaker 1: person perspective. I want to see how the paralegals work.
- 1:26:38Speaker 1: I want to see how the court appointed attorneys are
- 1:26:41Speaker 1: just overburdened. I find that stuff very fascinating. And when
- 1:26:47Speaker 1: you add a scumbag like this to the mix, well,
- 1:26:49Speaker 1: it'll be nice to see him go down in flames
- 1:26:51Speaker 1: for sure. According to new legal docs obtained by TMZ,
- 1:26:56Speaker 1: an undercover vice detective in Nevada posing as a sex
- 1:27:00Speaker 1: worker says Chopper direct messaged them on Instagram with an
- 1:27:04Speaker 1: apparent offer to make money through prostitution. And this time
- 1:27:08Speaker 1: it was an undercover police officer, right? The next time
- 1:27:12Speaker 1: it could have been your daughter. your niece, your friend's daughter,
- 1:27:17Speaker 1: someone's daughter, and chances are she would have been on
- 1:27:23Speaker 1: her way to Las Vegas or wherever this dude was
- 1:27:27Speaker 1: functioning at that time, and she would have been put
- 1:27:30Speaker 1: to work on the track. And then once that happens,
- 1:27:34Speaker 1: the rest of their lives, they're going to have to
- 1:27:36Speaker 1: live with that trauma, that pain, that suffering, remembering the
- 1:27:40Speaker 1: fact that this dude Basically, just use them as a commodity.
- 1:27:45Speaker 1: And you can't tell me people who are forced into
- 1:27:47Speaker 1: prostitution on the street level even don't suffer from the
- 1:27:51Speaker 1: same trauma that we see with people on a grand
- 1:27:54Speaker 1: scale of Epstein or Gerald Murray or Nygaard or any
- 1:27:57Speaker 1: of these other guys. It's the same thing. The undercover
- 1:28:03Speaker 1: cop says they searched Chopper's IG account and noticed several
- 1:28:07Speaker 1: posts related to prostitution and pimping, including posts where Chopper
- 1:28:11Speaker 1: flaunted wealth and made references to being a pimp, including
- 1:28:15Speaker 1: one image of him inside a plane with a phone
- 1:28:18Speaker 1: alongside the caption, sending him with money bag and a
- 1:28:22Speaker 1: crown emoji. Oh, you're so cool, bro. You're such a
- 1:28:25Speaker 1: cool guy sending them. It's like the whole entire like.
- 1:28:32Speaker 1: culture of, oh, pimping is cool, is ridiculous. Nothing cool
- 1:28:38Speaker 1: about being a pimp. and when you get Snoop Dogg
- 1:28:41Speaker 1: out here and these other influencers who talk about it
- 1:28:44Speaker 1: I just shake my head don't you dudes have daughters
- 1:28:47Speaker 1: bro how old are you yeah I guess it's cool
- 1:28:49Speaker 1: when you're in you know 15 and you're listening to
- 1:28:52Speaker 1: Poe Pimp in your car driving around or whatever listening
- 1:28:55Speaker 1: to some you know whatever the music you want to
- 1:28:58Speaker 1: listen to is alright great You're a grown-ass man. Probably should,
- 1:29:01Speaker 1: you know, stow that shit and understand that there's real-life
- 1:29:04Speaker 1: consequences to quote-unquote pimping. In the docs, the undercover cop
- 1:29:11Speaker 1: says they launched an investigation into Chopper after seeing social
- 1:29:15Speaker 1: media evidence of a potential sex trafficking operation. So I
- 1:29:19Speaker 1: wonder how many girls this dude has in his stable.
- 1:29:23Speaker 1: I'm guessing a lot. An ex-rapper flying around on private planes.
- 1:29:29Speaker 1: I'm sure he's involved in other shit as well. My
- 1:29:31Speaker 1: guess is, when all is said and done, we'll see
- 1:29:34Speaker 1: some drug charges come out of this too. The undercover
- 1:29:39Speaker 1: says Chopper called them and bragged about frequent travel and
- 1:29:42Speaker 1: having seven homes across the country, including one in Las Vegas,
- 1:29:46Speaker 1: while also telling the undercover Sin City was not a
- 1:29:49Speaker 1: place to do business because law enforcement was cracking down.
- 1:29:54Speaker 1: They certainly are. There is a move here in town
- 1:29:59Speaker 1: for more vice enforcement. And a lot of it, unfortunately,
- 1:30:03Speaker 1: is just focused on Las Vegas Boulevard, the gaming corridor.
- 1:30:08Speaker 1: But there are other areas of town that really need it,
- 1:30:11Speaker 1: specifically down on Boulder Highway. It is littered with pimps
- 1:30:16Speaker 1: and the broken and forgotten about people. Every time I
- 1:30:21Speaker 1: drive by there, it saddens me. Every time I'm going
- 1:30:24Speaker 1: to a casino down there or we're just driving through
- 1:30:28Speaker 1: to get to wherever we're going, it's always the same
- 1:30:31Speaker 1: scenes of sadness and misery, the hourly motels, the people
- 1:30:36Speaker 1: shambling around. And I've said to my girlfriend several times,
- 1:30:40Speaker 1: if there is ever a zombie outbreak, this might end
- 1:30:43Speaker 1: up being where patient zero ends up coming from. The
- 1:30:49Speaker 1: undercover says Chopper then became aggressive with them over the phone,
- 1:30:53Speaker 1: ordering them like he might do to a sex worker,
- 1:30:57Speaker 1: telling them to pack their belongings, get to the airport,
- 1:31:00Speaker 1: meet him in Charlotte and see to join his stable.
- 1:31:03Speaker 1: And that's what they call it. The stable, right? Like
- 1:31:06Speaker 1: you're a horse, like you're a high performance, high, you know,
- 1:31:10Speaker 1: powered animal that is only to be used for him
- 1:31:15Speaker 1: to make money or his entertainment. That's how he looks
- 1:31:17Speaker 1: at women. Stable. Someone should put you in a stable.
- 1:31:23Speaker 1: From there, the undercover says they stalled by telling Chopper
- 1:31:26Speaker 1: they were scared to leave home, with Chopper trying to
- 1:31:29Speaker 1: verbally force them to make the trip, getting angry, and
- 1:31:33Speaker 1: demanding a $ 2, 000 fee. Imagine? Who does this guy think
- 1:31:37Speaker 1: he is? Oh yeah, you're some real tough guy, Mr. Pimp.
- 1:31:41Speaker 1: Talking to women like that online, and then when they
- 1:31:43Speaker 1: get to wherever you are, I'm sure you're abusive. Because
- 1:31:46Speaker 1: that's how you do it, right? That's how these pimps roll.
- 1:31:49Speaker 1: What do you think? They show up and it's a
- 1:31:50Speaker 1: loving relationship. Oh, come here. I love you. They might
- 1:31:55Speaker 1: use that as their, you know, plan and plot to
- 1:31:58Speaker 1: get these girls as quote unquote part of their stable.
- 1:32:01Speaker 1: But the reality is it's all about turn and burn.
- 1:32:04Speaker 1: They want these girls to turn as many tricks as possible.
- 1:32:08Speaker 1: They don't care if they're in danger or anything like that.
- 1:32:12Speaker 1: Bring me my money. That's all they care about. Between
- 1:32:18Speaker 1: the alleged social media posts, direct messages, phone calls, and
- 1:32:21Speaker 1: feed demand, the undercover says there was enough evidence to
- 1:32:25Speaker 1: arrest and charge Chopper with felony sex trafficking. We reached
- 1:32:30Speaker 1: out to Chopper's camp. So far, no word back. His camp, huh? Okay,
- 1:32:36Speaker 1: I guess if you're a burned-down-ass, second-rate-ass rapper, you still
- 1:32:39Speaker 1: have a camp. Must be nice. What you should do
- 1:32:43Speaker 1: is reach out to his lawyer because that's who he's
- 1:32:46Speaker 1: going to need to contact. This guy's in big trouble.
- 1:32:50Speaker 1: They're not playing any games in Vegas. They're going to
- 1:32:51Speaker 1: get him extradited, and I hope they throw the book
- 1:32:54Speaker 1: at him. Getting verbally forceful, abusive on the phone, somebody
- 1:33:01Speaker 1: you don't even know. Can you imagine the way this
- 1:33:03Speaker 1: guy treats women in person? The way he treats his
- 1:33:06Speaker 1: quote-unquote stable if they don't make enough money? So yeah,
- 1:33:10Speaker 1: guess what? Good that this guy is arrested. Good that
- 1:33:14Speaker 1: he's probably going to go to prison for a long time.
- 1:33:17Speaker 1: Because guess what? One less scumbag out there preying on
- 1:33:22Speaker 1: your kids. That's going to do it for this episode, folks.
- 1:33:27Speaker 1: If you'd like to contact me, you can do that
- 1:33:29Speaker 1: at bobbycapucci at protonmail.com. That's B-O-B-B-Y-C-A-P-U-C-C-I at protonmail.com. You can
- 1:33:38Speaker 1: also find me on Twitter at B-O-B-B-Y underscore C-A-P-U-C-C-I. The
- 1:33:45Speaker 1: link that we discussed can be found in the description box.