COLUMBUS – A teacher, a firefighter and a city councilman were among more than 160 people arrested in a statewide crackdown on human trafficking in Ohio.
Attorney General Dave Yost says 161 people were arrested and 51 potential victims of human trafficking were helped during Operation Ohio Knows, an operation involving nearly 100 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies carried out between Sept. 24 to Oct. 1.
“People who traffic other humans are doing it for a really simple reason — money. And if there’s no demand then there will be no market,” Yost said Monday morning during a press conference at the Statehouse.
“The demand for sexual exploitation comes from unscrupulous buyers at the end of the human trafficking chain. Any person who pays another human being for sex or a sexual act is fueling the crime of human trafficking,” Central Ohio Human Trafficking Task Force director Sgt. Dana Hess said.
Operation Ohio Knows was coordinated through Yost’s Ohio Organized Crime Investigations Commission and also resulted in the arrests of 50 men and women offering to sell sex.
A simultaneous operation carried out by the U.S. Marshals Service recovered 10 missing children.
The 51 potential victims were provided services from health care and social services organizations.