By Eliza Ronalds-Hannon and Mujtaba Ali

As throngs travel to New Orleans to revel in the Super Bowl spectacle, law enforcement will be on the lookout for an anticipated spike in human trafficking, but some say their predictions are fundamentally flawed. 

High-profile events like the Super Bowl, which is the championship final of the American professional football season, bring big money to host cities, and authorities are loath to see those profits disappearing into the hands of organized criminals.

Officials have turbocharged their crime-fighting efforts this year in New Orleans, with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, Louisiana Department of Justice, and New Orleans police department all involved in the effort. “Sex trafficking is a key issue being addressed by law enforcement agencies on a state, federal, and local level,” said Assistant Attorney General Katherine Green of the Human Trafficking Task Force for the middle district of Louisiana. The agencies would not comment on the specific strategies they have planned.

Non-profit organizations are getting in on the action as well. The staff at TraffickFree, an American organization run by sex trafficking survivor Theresa Flores, travels to the Super Bowl host city each year to train local businesses, mostly hotels, on how to recognize and prevent trafficking.

Flores said the signs are subtle, but consistent: girls being dropped off at hotels by cars that drive away rather than park; high-end cars at low-end hotels; girls without luggage traveling with older men; girls sporting visible bruises.

Flores started a campaign called “SOAP,” which stands for “Save Our Adolescents from Prostitution.” She delivers boxes of soap to the hotels that willaccommodate Super Bowl tourists, and the soap bars come with a message: the name and phone number of the National Human Trafficking Hotlines, with a plea to victims to call if they want help.

Hotels often get involved.  The Carlson Rezidor Group said it provides human trafficking awareness training for all of its hotels, but during Super Bowl season it reminds its hotels in the host city to ensure all staff have been trained recently, or better yet, to provide a refresher course.

“Prior to the Super Bowl in 2012, Carlson Rezidor corporate trainers were sent to Dallas to ensure all Carlson brand hotel employees were trained in what was then a newly revised program,” said Heather Faulkner, the Senior Director of Public Relations for Carlson, “and before the London Olympics last summer, all Radisson Blu Edwardian London hotel employees received human trafficking awareness training.”

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