Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s Human Trafficking Task Force and Fentanyl Strike Force recently concluded a four-day combined operation along Mississippi’s Gulf Coast. The sting, dubbed “Operation Game Over,” was carried out in collaboration with federal, state, and local law enforcement from February 5 to 8, coinciding with Super Bowl weekend.
It resulted in the recovery of four female human trafficking victims and one kid, 33 arrests, and the seizure of substances such as ecstasy, cocaine, and 55 grams of fentanyl.
“In this one operation, we seized enough fentanyl to kill 8,580 people,” Attorney General Fitch said in a press release. “But we only scratched the surface of the poison being peddled to our children.”
Stacey Riley is the CEO of the Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence, which serves victims of domestic violence and sexual assaults. She was on-site for each night of the sting operations and claims that because the Mississippi Gulf Coast is so near to New Orleans, detectives looked into women’s dating website ads.
“They knew there’s going to be a lot of activity here on the coast for getting access to those who were trying to traffic people as well as those who were being trafficked,” she told me.
The Gulf Coast Center for Nonviolence provided immediate care and treatment to the victims found during the operation. Riley claims that most of the victims were first in denial.
“The more time they spent with us in a different, more comfortable environment, the more they opened up about the kind of circumstances of what they were dealing with,” she told me.
The casualties were from around the country. There was one youngster among them.
“Sometimes there are collateral damages that are there,” Riley pointed out. “Sometimes there are people, including children, who were involved in human trafficking because it may just be because their mother is also a trafficking victim.”
Last week, Attorney General Fitch spoke with MPB about “Be the Solution,” a human trafficking awareness campaign she co-led with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill ahead of the Super Bowl.
“Human trafficking is a form of modern-day slavery to which people are profiting from the exploitation of others,” Fitch, the attorney general, explained. “We perceive it as a $150 billion market that is rapidly expanding, making it one of the most successful criminal businesses in the world. So, sadly, it’s here in Mississippi and Louisiana, and we see it at major events like the Super Bowl.”
