Beaverton Police Detective Chad Opitz was one of four law enforcement professionals nationwide who was invited by the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, to sit on an advisory panel for the “Summit on Combating Human Trafficking” that occurred last month in Washington DC. The summit brought together law enforcement representatives, politicians, counselors, victims, and non-profit organizations from across the country to discuss the problem of human trafficking.
“The goal here is to develop a victim-oriented approach to our investigations,” said Opitz who has become an expert at identifying, locating and recovering minors who are victims of sex trafficking.
Globally, there are more than 4 million sex trafficking victims. While there is no official estimate of the number of sex trafficking victims in the U.S., it is suspected that more than 5,000 cases occur annually in the U.S. and many of the victims are children. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children estimates that 1 in 7 of the more than 23,500 runaways reported to the nonprofit organization in 2018 were likely victims of child sex trafficking.