PONTIAC, Mich. \u2013 Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald joined community and law enforcement leaders to provide an update on the county\u2019s fight against human trafficking.<\/p>\n
The briefing included Southfield Police Chief Elvin Barren, Auburn Hills Police Chief Ryan Gagnon, Oakland County Commission Chair Dave Woodward and Commissioners Michael Spisz and Linnie Taylor.<\/p>\n
Before 2021, the prosecutor\u2019s office had prosecuted only five trafficking cases in nine years.<\/p>\n
Since taking office, McDonald formed a human trafficking task force unit that has prosecuted 38 trafficking cases in the past year.<\/p>\n
The office has also started focusing on charging individuals who seek services from traffickers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve learned how to stop it and how to prevent it, and part of that is holding individuals accountable who seek out and pay traffickers for sexual acts,\u201d McDonald said.<\/p>\n
So far, eight individuals who purchased sex work have been charged.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is a meaningful part of how we stop trafficking,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
According to McDonald, Michigan ranks as one of the top states in the country for human trafficking.<\/p>\n
Auburn Hills Police Chief Ryan Gagnon emphasized that help is available for those involved in trafficking.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you are involved in this, call 911. Contact your local law enforcement, ask to be put in touch with task force members in Oakland County and we can get you the help. There\u2019s a lot of resources out there,\u201d Gagnon said.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2025 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PONTIAC, Mich. \u2013 Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald joined community and law enforcement leaders to provide an update…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":99324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[54158,143,904,145,144],"class_list":["post-99323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-karen-mcdonald","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-county","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}