Guardian Group: 2022 First Quarter Impact Report

Over the last few years, the need for a scalable solution to match the ever-increasing domestic trafficking problem has been in the forefront of our minds. The time has come to make this solution a reality and therefore much of our efforts recently have been focused on the development of a program to meet this need. This new program will remain our top priority in the coming months until it is ready for launch. Stay tuned!

While work is being done to complete this new program our offensive and defensive programs have been actively doing their part to combat domestic sex trafficking.

Guardian Group’s analysts support law enforcement in two ways. The first is through the proactive generation of leads for law enforcement to take action. This means that our team is actively searching the internet to identify potential sex trafficking victims. This process can be time consuming and law enforcement rarely has the resources to proactively generate their own leads alongside the other crimes society is asking them to police. Once we identify a lead it is passed to our partners based on location and age of the potential victim. Once it is passed it is up to the law enforcement department to determine how they will proceed.

The second way our PURSUIT® Team comes alongside law enforcement is through operational support, meaning the analysts provide lead generation for a planned law enforcement operation in a specific location during a specific time frame. During the first quarter of 2022, we’ve had the opportunity to support a few different operations. In both cases, law enforcement successfully conducted their missions and were able to offer victims a path to freedom with full wrap around services, based on some of the leads our team provided.

Above you’ll notice that we are no longer reporting on stings supported. This metric has always been difficult to accurately measure because we get limited or no feedback from our law enforcement partners. Law enforcement goes to great lengths to protect victims during the judicial process of a case and oftentimes this means they cannot relay this information to us. Without the feedback we err on the side of being conservative and historically have only shared based on known feedback.

We strive to be as transparent as possible when sharing our metrics, with this in mind we have decided to focus on the metrics we have a better control of the data. These metrics are also a direct reflection of victims identified.

In the coming months when our new program launches, we will expand the metrics we are sharing with you to include measurements of this effort’s effectiveness.

January was National Human Trafficking Awareness month and Guardian Group had the opportunity to provide vital training to nurses, first responders, corporations, and community members. This training provided these professionals with the ability to recognize and respond to potential trafficking situations throughout their daily lives.

The PURSUIT® Volunteer Training and Assessment course launched in the fall of last year. Each of the highlighted states above represents a state with at least 1 volunteer that has passed the course. These volunteers are dedicating their time and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) skills to helping search for victims on the internet for Guardian Group to illuminate to law enforcement. As countless other volunteers work to complete the course, we will continue to share this map with you so you can watch this team of volunteers expand across the nation.

Donor Highlight

We are pleased to highlight The Healy Foundation and First Story. Both organizations have provided grants specific to helping fund the completion of the work necessary to launch this new program.

Join the Fight

As this battle continues and we continue to innovate and work towards scalable solutions we are asking you to help us by becoming a monthly donor. As a Guardian you help generate the reliable funding necessary to grow and meet the increasing demands necessary to combat this crime effectively.

Guardians give at whatever level is comfortable for them. We cannot do this alone. Join us until all are free.