CANTON — St. Lawrence County legislators passed a resolution during Monday’s Operations Committee meeting to help combat human trafficking in the region.
The resolution accepts a Howard G. Buffet Foundation Grant for $1,000,720 to cover costs associated with joining a labor trafficking task force that serves the state. The grant is for a three-year period.
The task force will bring together local law enforcement, victim agencies, legal services and outreach entities.
St. Lawrence County Sheriff Brooks J. Bigwarfe said the idea for the county to tackle trafficking was seeded by Lon Ziankoski, officer in charge at U.S. Homeland Security Investigations in Massena, who approached Mr. Bigwarfe last fall about starting a human and drug trafficking task force.
“That got our wheels in motion, so I got my administration to start searching for grants and we applied for this one,” Mr. Bigwarfe said.
According to the resolution, the goals of the grant include conducting victim-centered trafficking investigations and prosecutions, providing case management and immigration legal services to identify victims, conducting outreach to vulnerable communities and developing practices for identifying and responding to survivors of trafficking.
Some funding from the grant will go toward Renewal House in Canton, Mr. Bigwarfe said, which aids victims of domestic violence and sexual assault.
He said Ilene J. Burke, Renewal House executive director, did an “exceptional job” helping the sheriff’s office with writing and facilitating the grant.
The funding will also be used to dedicate a detective full time to human trafficking cases, he said.
“It will be someone that’s an experienced officer with years of experience,” he said.
That detective will report to Mr. Bigwarfe and Mr. Ziankoski.
Mr. Bigwarfe said money will be used for new equipment, including new interview recording systems and night-vision binoculars to help with surveillance, as well as a vehicle.
Mr. Bigwarfe said human trafficking has been in the north country for a while, but the resources to adequately address it have been unavailable until now.
“We’ve always known there’s human trafficking in the area, especially being so close to a border,” he said. “We just haven’t had the resources to do in-depth investigations.”
“But now,” he said, “we have a dedicated officer, dedicated equipment, dedicated treatment and dedicated services.”
“It’s something we probably should have addressed a long time ago,” he added, “but this grant affords us the opportunity to do it now.”
Even if the grant isn’t renewed after three years, Mr. Bigwarfe said the department will still get to keep all of the new equipment.
The resolution will move to the next full board meeting on Sept. 12.
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