Professor Led Team of Human Trafficking Investigators at Super Bowl

Prof. Jeffrey Blom’s work investigating human trafficking has taken him across the country and around the world. He has played a critical role in operations from Alabama to Africa, and his work recently brought him to the Super Bowl LVI in California.

An adjunct professor of investigations at the University, Prof. Blom investigated human trafficking in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, which was held in Inglewood, CA. After arriving in southern California the Tuesday before the big game, he spent the next several days and nights focused on surveilling and covertly collecting raw data and information. Overseeing a surveillance and intelligence team, he worked with individuals from a variety of specialty backgrounds, such as military intelligence and law enforcement.

“There’s an understanding that anytime you have a major event that draws a lot of out of town visitors, it also draws a demand for certain types of services – and one of those is sex,” explains Prof. Blom, who has a background in law enforcement and is a former chief of police. “With the increased density of males in that area for a football game, people allegedly bring females into the area to traffic for sexual exploitation to meet this increased demand.”

‘That brought us together’

While developing sources on the ground, Prof. Blom and his colleagues went into local businesses, such as hotels, and spoke with owners and staff members to get an idea of what was going on. They gathered intelligence on a wide range of events and establishments – from high-end hotels to Super Bowl parties – to learn about and monitor what was happening. They then forwarded the information to the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Prof. Blom and his colleagues were embedded in these communities, including, in some cases, some dangerous areas. He says that, in many cases, the women they were monitoring did not know they were there, but they remained nearby just in case something happened. They gained people’s trust and learned to trust each other.

Prof. Blom says that among the greatest challenges he and his colleagues faced was that their work required them to quickly learn to work together as a team, despite the fact that they’d never worked together before. Each team member had a different background – they had different protocols to follow, methods of operations, and reporting structures – so they had to quickly determine how to collaborate with a unified command structure.

“Mainly, we were focused on children,” he said. “What unified us was focusing on children being exploited, and that brought us together.”

‘Prevent the exploitation from happening’

During their collaboration, Prof. Blom says they were able to identify more than a dozen targets they believed could be prime locations for trafficking. He explains that, because it takes time to follow up on investigations, they didn’t receive their results immediately, but because they did generate several leads to follow up on, he says the results were promising.

“The outcome showed that something like this can be done and that it is effective,” he said. “It showed that a unified effort in bringing in specialists to do different things in controlled situations can have a big impact. This is the first time we partnered with the NFL, the Los Angeles anti-trafficking community, and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, and it was the first time everybody had a unified effort that was sanctioned by the NFL and the sports authority in L.A.”

Prof. Blom says his experience as a police chief and assembling teams to handle security for events, as well as his time leading crime and multi-agency drug taskforces, ensured he was well-prepared for his role in leading Super Bowl trafficking investigations. He also continues to draw on what he has learned in his work with organizations and agencies around the world.

After working in investigations for International Justice Mission, a non-governmental organization, and assisting with programs in nearly two dozen countries, Prof. Blom joined Love Justice International. A nonprofit dedicated to combatting social justice, Love Justice International is particularly focused on addressing human trafficking. Now its chief investigations and security officer, Prof. Blom has been with the organization for more than a decade, focusing on expanding its work on human trafficking intervention.

“I’m always working on trying to bring technology to the next level with trafficking,” he said. “I’m working with AI to help determine who is being trafficked, prior to their being trafficked. We intercept victims before exploitation. I’ve been working on indicators that would lead us to a high level of probability that these people are in the process of being trafficked, so we can identify them before exploitation and before the trauma and damage are done. We want to prevent the exploitation from happening.”

‘We just have to find them’

Prof. Blom’s work has brought him all over the world – including to Cambodia, Turkey, and Greece. He also brings his experience to his students at the University, tying in what he has learned and teaching them about the important work being done in the field.

After working with the Alabama attorney general’s office on a recent major labor-trafficking operation, Prof. Blom discussed with his students many of the challenges he and his colleagues faced, and he encouraged them to explore how they would handle these situations.

During the fall semester, Prof. Blom spent four weeks leading police training and operations in Malawi near the Tanzania border. He shared photos and videos with his students, and they discussed his experience in class.

“I try to bring real-word experience to my students,” he said. “Knowing what they’re going to need going forward, I try to give them that baseline, that foundation, and get them to critically think. I’m taking it far beyond what I’m able to do. I always try to make class discussions as relevant as possible, to bring in real videos and pictures when I can of operations and outcomes, and to get them involved in strategies.”

Committed to ending human trafficking, Prof. Blom is also conducting research that, he hopes, will lead to more effective ways to identify victims before they are exploited in the first place.

“We know people are being recruited, deceived, and being moved illicitly, so we just have to find them,” he explains. “My research is focusing on behavioral, psychological, and cultural indicators, and we work in transit stations, bus stations, airports, water ports, and land borders to intercept and identify these victims.”