The Sheriff in The Tug Rule Case Says There is No Human Trafficking After Writing in The Globe There is Lots of Trafficking
Remember that Florida sheriff who was so quick to call a press conference once he realized his department had found a 77-year-old internationally famous billionaire (allegedly) buying a hand job in one of those spas that specializes in back rubs and hand jobs and scream about human trafficking? Yeah, about that. …
Now that we’re coming up on five weeks, the women involved in Mr. Kraft choosing The Tug Life are middle aged American citizens who own their own business, there are no victims, no trafficking charges have been brought and he’s been reduced to just threatening to release the tapes that were probably obtained illegally, he is singing a very different tune. While still pandering to female voters without a subatomic particle of shame:
“I think people should be concerned about their privacy,” Martin County Sheriff William Snyder told Contact 5, during a recent one-on-one interview. “We would only do a video surveillance like this under the most extraordinary circumstances.” …
“We had law enforcement personnel pose as repair persons to be able to get in and to install the cameras,” Snyder told Contact 5’s Merris Badcock. …
“We did not monitor any women who went into the parlor,” said Snyder. “We just assumed they were there for legitimate purposes.” …
“It looks like trafficking. It feels like trafficking. It sounds like trafficking. I believe it is human trafficking,” Snyder told Contact 5. “But we are just a little short to being able to prove that.”
Which is an odd thing for Sheriff Snyder to be saying. Since he just finished publishing an Op-Ed piece in John Henry’s Boston Globe a few hours ago that sticks by his original fiction about terrified, underaged victims from overseas being held against their will in the Orchids of Asia Day Spa’s secret dungeons:
The resulting eight-month investigation took us on an eye-opening journey into the ugly world of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. With court-ordered video surveillance in place, we found that the women selling sex acts in these strip mall brothels were virtual slaves: They rarely left the premises; they serviced an average of eight men a day, without protection; they slept on the massage table and cooked on hot plates; they were moved every few weeks to another branch in this network. We tracked $20 million in money flowing back toward China from this spiderweb of spas across southern Florida.
Yet for me as county sheriff, the starkest revelation during this journey was how the local men in our community — some rich, some ordinary, many of them respected family men — were the drivers of this abusive business.
The average cop — and that includes me — has no idea what human trafficking really looks like. It’s an amorphous world that defies stereotypes.
I admit I know even less about law enforcement than Sheriff Snyder. But I know that if I was in charge of an investigation into women held with sex slaves I wouldn’t:
A) Wait eight months until I caught “some rich, some ordinary” or “respected family men” before I sent a strike team in to kick the fucking doors down and rescue these women, and
B) Waste my precious man hours penning self-aggrandizing editorials in a newspaper that deeply resents Mr. Kraft’s success when by my own admission my eight month investigation is going goddamned nowhere. No matter how gleeful the Globe editors are to publish my politically motivated, self-serving spin.
But on behalf of New England – and the Kraft legal team – thanks. You no doubt just sunk your own prosecution that wasn’t going anywhere anyway by admitting this human trafficking thing was just for headlines and pandering for female votes by inventing a group of victims you by your own admission can’t identify.
Today Mr. Kraft’s lawyers said they want a jury trial. After this, it won’t ever get to that stage.