#77, Specialized IPC Training Yields Results

It is difficult to find something you aren’t looking for.

If we go to a domestic violence call, it would be irresponsible to assume everything is okay just because both parties deny needing assistance. We therefore rely on our training to look for context clues that will provide more insight about the situation. Are items in disarray? Does someone have a bruised neck or scratched upper arms? If we separate the people involved, do they tell the same story? It is precisely knowing what to look for that often helps get a victim out of danger.

Similarly, we know that swerving or failure to maintain a lane may suggest a person is driving while impaired. Therefore, we look for other clues. Are there empty beer cans in the vehicle? Are the driver’s eyes red or glassy? Does he or she seem clumsy while getting the registration out of the glove box?

Almost half a million children are missing in the United States, but shockingly, very few law enforcement officers are trained to look for them actively. Therefore, we recently started sending deputies to a relatively new program called Interdiction for the Protection of Children (IPC). IPC is an evidence-based curriculum created by the Texas Department of Public Safety. Interdiction refers to intercepting movement, most often discussed in terms of disrupting drug trafficking on our highways. For example, officers on a drug interdiction team might know where the natural cavities in a vehicle are. They are also trained to look for signs of tampering or modification that might indicate large amounts of narcotics are concealed within.

The goal of IPC is to broaden the perspective of law enforcement officers, teaching them how to identify missing children. Those with IPC training know that not every child in a vehicle is with a parent or other appropriate person. Believing that a child in the back seat will say, “Hi, I am Jane Doe, and this man kidnapped me three months ago” is not a reasonable expectation. Encountering a child is not the same as looking for a missing one.

The IPC program, important everywhere, is especially critical in North Carolina, which is consistently ranked in the country’s top 10 states for human trafficking. We have several major interstate highways, a significant military presence, large agricultural areas, a booming tourism industry, and we are approximately halfway between Florida and New York, all of which are factors conducive to exploiting people for profit.

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety provides the multi-disciplinary IPC training through the North Carolina Justice Academy. The program has four primary pillars: train officers to identify individuals who pose a high risk to children; equip officers to recognize children who are being exploited, abused, or trafficked; teach officers about the resources available to help them determine the status of a child who may be missing or at risk; and prevent future crimes, partly through the effective prosecution of people who exploit children in any manner.

A deep dive into these pillars is beyond the scope of this article, but in brief, the first two pillars help law enforcement officers understand the coin has two sides. One is to identify what makes adult behavior suspicious; the other is to recognize how the actions of children and adolescents might provide clues to their status as victims. Those trained in IPC also understand why the presence of some objects and the absence of others might be cause for suspicion.

The third pillar is critical. Officers need to know how to access resources immediately to facilitate rescue with minimal additional trauma.  If they are unable to do that, officers log suspicious activity into a database that tracks patterns and searches for connections.  The final pillar recognizes the complexity of these crimes and the important work of the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys. The Conference prepares prosecutors to secure convictions in these complex, multijurisdictional criminal cases.

Within weeks of attending the training, one of our deputies, while assisting another agency on a call involving a runaway, recognized something was “off.” He viewed the juvenile as more than a rebellious teen and noticed signs that she might now be caught in a dangerous web. Despite the hour, he arranged for expert resources. The resulting forensic interview revealed the teen had been commercially sex trafficked since she went missing. Moreover, the interview led to the rescue of a second victim and criminal charges against three co-conspirators.

IPC is a mindset. Missing kids are out there. I want all my deputies trained to find them.