City of Philadelphia efforting human trafficking awareness and prevention campaign

PHILADELPHIA – The City of Philadelphia is launching its first citywide human trafficking awareness and prevention campaign.

What we know:

“Human trafficking has been an issue and a problem everywhere worldwide and also locally here, but there seems to be a lack of awareness that it’s actually happening right under our noses,” says Philadelphia Councilmember Nina Ahmad. 

The issue is especially on the forefront because of the busy year the Philadelphia region is expected to have in 2026.

“As we prepare for our nations 250th anniversary, the FIFA World Cup, the major MLB events, we know that large gatherings too often increase opportunities for traffickers,” says Councilmember Ahmad. 

The city has invested $500,000 into the city budget for the campaign, which will be used to provide awareness and education to the public about human trafficking. 

“Will it be messages on SEPTA, will it be a public service announcements on the radio, the TV, will there be billboards,” says. Councilman Ahmad.

Whatever tools they decided to utilize for education it will work alongside the initiatives already put in place by several city, state, and federal organizations, including the Philadelphia Police Department.

“The more we educate our men and women in the Police Department, the more we educate the community as to what is trafficking, the more we raise that awareness and raise education level, your hope is that the benefit from that is people will report,” says Philadelphia Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s office is also working to create their own task force to provide additional support. 

“So that we can assign victim advocates and detectives specifically to specialize in this work, at this important time when there is no question that we face a very significant challenge in the year 2026 in trying to protect people,” says Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. 

Officials say even though the focus right now is 2026, the goal is to provide this awareness and protection against human trafficking way beyond next year. 

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