St. Cloud area receives grant to combat sex trafficking

A drive-by shooting in the parking lot of a Waite Park motel in 2014 was a sign that sex trafficking in the St. Cloud area was becoming a violent problem.

Area law enforcement agencies have teamed up to investigate and prosecute traffickers and the johns who sought to pay for sex. Now, they're getting some financial help to beef up those efforts.

The Stearns County Attorney's Office and area law enforcement agencies received a two-year $313,000 state grant to hire two officers to investigate trafficking crimes.

Waite Park Police Chief Dave Bentrud told the Stearns County board of commissioners that when investigators started digging into the problem of trafficking, they found that it extended beyond St. Cloud into smaller area communities. Bentrud said it's often linked to other criminal activity.

"It ties to gangs, violent offenders, drugs," he said. "We felt that trying to figure out a way to allocate more investigative resources to the problem made sense."

Stearns County Attorney Janelle Kendall said St. Cloud had become a haven for sex trafficking outside of the Twin Cities, "because no one paid any attention to it."

Since the agencies formed a trafficking task force and stepped up enforcement, eight pimps have been convicted and sentenced to four to 27 years in prison, Kendall said.

"These are professional criminals who sell drugs and women," she said. "Usually, if the women can't make their quota, they're going out and committing property crimes to make up the cash that they can't make from the johns."

In addition, more than 100 johns have been prosecuted, Kendall said.

The amount of the grant was less than the $500,000 the agencies sought. The county board agreed to pay the cost of hiring a crime data analyst that isn't covered by the grant.