Pittsburg Police Department: Unmasking human traffickers

“When I used Peregrine, it gave me information that I needed – but didn’t even know I was looking for. Peregrine was the turning point in the investigation.”

Sgt. Kyle Baker

Pittsburg PD, California

A “mobile and widespread” crime

Human trafficking is a uniquely mobile and widespread crime. To rescue victims, investigators must find small nuggets of information from untraditional sources.

• Peregrine surfaces information detectives need – even if they don’t know what they’re looking for.
• Turn days or weeks of investigative work into mere hours with Peregrine.

Human trafficking is a particularly heinous crime. In 2021, the National Human Trafficking Hotline identified over 10,000 cases involving nearly 17,000 victims.

Sgt. Kyle Baker from the Pittsburg, CA Police Department (PPD) has worked hundreds of commercial sex investigations. He’s a court-recognized expert in human trafficking and developed a human trafficking course certified by the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training (POST).

Baker explained why human trafficking cases are uniquely difficult to solve. “It’s a mobile and widespread crime. A victim can be trafficked across multiple jurisdictions all over a state. That’s incredibly common in California.”

One such example comes from the Los Angeles Regional Human Trafficking Task Force. When they announced a major series of arrests and rescues by California law enforcement, over 40 police departments were involved – alongside dozens of other public safety agencies.

Unearthing small nuggets of information

Baker explained that first-level sweeps only encompass so much information. “If I run a search on someone’s criminal history, I’ll get information on arrests and things like that,” he said. “But to solve human trafficking cases, you really need small nuggets of information – that may not be obvious – to get a breakthrough in the case.”

He told us about a recent case he worked involving two female victims. He knew there was an individual exploiting these women but couldn’t identify them. “Normally, I’d review public information online like social media, and try to use phone numbers and photos to identify people harming victims,” he explained.

But even after securing search warrants for the victims’ social media profiles and trying to use information like aliases and birthdays, he still struggled to identify the suspect.

So, he turned to Peregrine.

Unmasking human traffickers

Sgt. Baker started by using Peregrine to look up an individual he believed was connected to the suspect. What he found was surprising – a key piece of information from a call for service from another police department in the area. It included a nickname and phone number that Sgt. Baker used to verify the suspect’s identity.

“When I used Peregrine, it gave me information that I needed – but didn’t even know I was looking for. Peregrine was the turning point in the investigation.” The result? Pittsburg PD pursued a multi-victim commercial sex case, ultimately identifying numerous victims and taking the suspect into custody.

Want to learn more about Peregrine’s search functionality, including interagency data? Dive into our explainer here.

“If I don’t know that call for service exists, how the heck do I find it?” he continued. “I wouldn’t have any reason to call the other police department to ask about it. With Peregrine, I found I could access information that was crucial to the case, even if I wasn’t looking for it – from our systems, and from other police departments in our region.”

This experience fundamentally changed how Sgt. Baker will conduct investigations moving forward.

“Peregrine is my first stop when conducting investigations. It enables me to do first- and second-level sweeps for information all in one go. Rather than searching for information across all our systems, Peregrine gives me that data in one place alongside information from other police departments.”

Find what you need – even if you don’t know you need it – only with Peregrine.

Peregrine is built on AWS GovCloud.