You may not think of Windsor-Essex as a hub of human trafficking, but LaSalle police say it's still important to know the signs.
Senior Const. Harbinder Gill stresses human trafficking is complex and nuanced.
“Human trafficking is not something like the movie 'Taken'. It's not smuggling,” says Gill.
He says the practice sees people use coercive relationships to trap people into forced labour, sex work or even organ harvesting.
An $80,000 grant from the ministry of the attorney general helped support the initiative in LaSalle on Wednesday.
Much of that money went to buy an automatic licence plate reader for the service to help track those who may be trafficking people.
Gill says trafficking cases do make their way to the Windsor-Essex area on occasion with Ontario having the highest incidents in Canada of human trafficking.
Pascale Colucci attended the forum at the LaSalle Civic Centre and says her grassroots group is looking to hold a walk for freedom on Oct. 20.
“You know and there are many forms of trafficking and it's a passion of my heart because justice needs to be served,” says Colucci. “These people have lives. They're innocent. They're being used for profit and they are voiceless so, we are standing together with the community to fight for freedom, to fight for their freedom to let them know that we care and we're here.”
