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Miss Utah County urges local support for human-trafficking prevention and law-enforcement tools
Summary
Erica Dalton, Miss Utah County 2024, told commissioners she was targeted in a trafficking attempt and described her 'Street Smarts' prevention work and efforts to fund digital forensics and electronic-storage-detection canines for law enforcement.
Erica Dalton, Miss Utah County 2024, addressed the Utah County Commission on Sept. 4 about her community service initiative focused on personal safety and human-trafficking prevention.
Dalton described a college-era incident in which she and friends were contacted and later had to flee for safety; she said bystanders intervened and that experience inspired her work. "I was actually targeted in a human trafficking attempt," Dalton told the commission, and she said that experience led her to organize personal-safety seminars and to lobby for child-internet-safety bills.
Dalton said there are an estimated 50,000,000 victims of human trafficking worldwide, with roughly a third children, and she urged county leaders to consider local needs. In her role as a development specialist at Our Rescue, a nonprofit she described as working in survivor care and education, she said the organization has partnered with more than 500 local law-enforcement agencies nationwide and helps fund digital-intelligence tools such as GreyKey and CellBright and specialized electronic-storage-detection (ESD) canines to find hidden devices and storage media.
Dalton said those tools — which she described as expensive and requiring specialized training — have helped uncover evidence often missed in initial sweeps, and she said her group has sponsored more than 100 detection dogs domestically and internationally but that no ESD canine currently operates in Utah because the previous dog retired.
She asked the commission to consider how county leaders could facilitate connections between law enforcement and her organization to provide equipment, training and canine resources.
The commission thanked Dalton for her remarks and for her community service. Dalton offered to stay in touch to explore potential partnership opportunities.
