Hotel employees urged to help fight child-sex trafficking

ST PAUL PIONEER PRESS, Richard Chin (8/24/12) – Ramsey County Attorney John Choi is recruiting a new set of eyes and ears to combat child-sex trafficking: hotel desk clerks and housekeepers. At a news conference Thursday, Aug. 23, at a Radisson hotel in Roseville, Choi and other metro-area prosecutors, police officials, children’s advocates and representatives from the lodging industry announced an initiative to train hotel employees to look for clues that pimps might be using a hotel room to prostitute a minor and to report suspicions to police. “The selling of our children is happening on Backpage.com, and it usually ends up in a hotel or a motel in our community,” Choi said. Backpage.com is an online classified ad site that Choi and other officials have criticized for being a platform to traffic minors for sex. Read more.