National Police Association Podcast

Betsy Smith: 00:07

Hi. This is sergeant Betsy Brantner Smith with the National Police Association, and this is the National Police Association podcast. I have with me a guest today who is a fellow Arizonan. I don't get to say that very often. She is also, a retired police detective, but she didn't stop after she got done with her police agency.

Betsy Smith: 00:31

She went on to do, some investigative work. But more importantly, she went on to do, public education, and what she is involved in is so very important, and she also has a book to go along with it. We have so much to talk about. Detective Heidi Chance, welcome to the show.

Heidi Chance: 00:52

Thank you so much for having me.

Betsy Smith: 00:54

So, of course, I have to ask you because this is what everyone asks us. Why did you become a cop?

Heidi Chance: 01:00

You know, it is in the blood, and I know a lot of people say that. But my my father was also Phoenix PD. He did twenty six years. And then his father, so my grandfather was NYPD. And then I also have an uncle that was a cop, also in New York, and then when he moved out here to Arizona, another agency in Arizona.

Heidi Chance: 01:20

So it is really in the blood for me.

Betsy Smith: 01:23

I love that. Now you became, a police officer when women had a fairly decent foothold, but, you got involved in a lot of different things. But one of, the things you did get involved in was, working undercover. Now I did that for a number of years. There's nothing more fun, but it's kinda weird sometimes.

Betsy Smith: 01:48

Talk about some of your undercover work.

Heidi Chance: 01:52

Yeah. So I got involved in undercover work actually after being a school resource officer. As a school resource officer, you know how we don't get to keep the car. We gotta turn it in. So I went into the police station to turn the keys in, and I noticed in the juvenile holding area, there was a girl that was in custody.

Heidi Chance: 02:10

And I recognized her as a former student of mine. She's still a juvenile on that day, and I knew her when she was about 13 or 14. And I peeked my head in, and I asked her, why are you in trouble? And she told me she was under arrest for prostitution. And so I had already been a police officer, seven or eight years by then.

Heidi Chance: 02:28

I knew prostitution was a crime. I was stationed in Maryville Precinct in West Phoenix, and I really didn't think or, you know, put two and two together that youth get involved in prostitution. So that was, like, my first eye opening shocking moment of seeing kids involved in being trafficked. And so that's what caused me to move to the vice unit, which was at the time the undercover unit. What's unique about the undercover unit at that time is it was only allowed one female position because at that time, we were arresting prostitutes.

Heidi Chance: 03:01

So you needed male detectives to be able to arrest prostitutes. So I have the unique experience of the evolution of, Phoenix Police Department's response to this crime and how we evolved to realize that some of these girls that we've been arresting were probably victims and we need female undercovers to work the true bad guys in this trafficking situation, which are the sex buyers and the traffickers. So now I'm happy to say that those squads in the human trafficking unit, which is what it was renamed, are outweighed by female detectives, weighing outweighing the males.

Betsy Smith: 03:37

You know, Heidi, so often we hear, prostitution, and human trafficking called, sex work and things like that. And we're, we, the American public, are led to believe that prostitution is basically a victimless crime. Can you set the record straight on that for folks?

Heidi Chance: 03:58

Yeah. So prostitution, when we talk about it, it involves, obviously, by definition, force, fraud, or coercion. And when you have victims that are involved in that, they may be freely walking down the side of the road with a phone in their hand, but we don't know that they haven't been enduring violence, that they haven't been threatened in some way, that they aren't trapped. And then I will argue to tell you that they are trapped and not free to leave. As an expert that have testified in, you know, US, US court here in, Arizona, federal court, I have testified about the lifestyle.

Heidi Chance: 04:36

And I think that's what the general public really needs to get clear on is that this lifestyle involves way more than the perception of of to be a victim, you have to be locked into a, you know, a closet or handcuffed to a bed or tied to, you know, the pole in the room to be a victim. And that's where I think that's a big misconception because, I'm gonna testify that this person's a victim and they're freely walking down the side of the road, and I need juries to see that they are a victim.

Betsy Smith: 05:04

How often are drugs involved when you're you're dealing with a working prostitute?

Heidi Chance: 05:10

Well, as an undercover, I've had a lot of traffickers that I've catfished, and a lot of them inquire about your drug habit because they don't wanna compete with the drugs to control you. But on the other hand, I've interviewed hundreds of victims who've described they had an addiction to fentanyl or they had an addiction to whatever drug and their trafficker would would withheld that drug in exchange for you need to do this date first and then I'll give you the drug as a reward. So it it goes both ways. Not always, but definitely drugs are part of a tool that traffickers can use to control victims.

Betsy Smith: 05:44

Now Arizona is a border state. How often would you see or or do you currently see in in your other role, human trafficking involving women and children and sometimes men from other countries?

Heidi Chance: 06:01

Yeah. So, the way that I explain that when I get, asked that question is there's two types, in my opinion, two types of trafficking. They have more organized trafficking, which you would think of the border, the cartels, massage parlors, organized trafficking. And then we have individuals trafficking other individuals, which we've got pimps. Which pimps and trafficker, that is the same word I'm sorry, two different words describing the same person.

Heidi Chance: 06:27

But basically, it is two different tactics, two different ways of doing the same thing. So my experience inner city Phoenix is a lot of individualized traffickers trafficking other individuals. I did have some investigations involving massage parlors, for example, or a brothel, and that would be individuals that don't speak English, that are not holding their own identification. They are certainly controlled by, a person locally to them, but also someone out of the country. And so if that's what you're what you're asking, that is definitely something I have a slight bit of experience with in the inner city of Phoenix.

Heidi Chance: 07:04

But more often than not, because this is such a transient crime, we have a lot of individualized traffickers popping into Phoenix for three or four days and then on to the next place. And that's what we're really overwhelmed with as far as the street prostitution, especially in Phoenix in the general population area.

Betsy Smith: 07:23

Now along about the toward the late nineties, as as people started to get, personal computers into their homes, this is well before smartphones, we started to see children, being, you know, being, lured by online predators. And, frankly, we never got a real handle on it as law enforcement, although we've, you know, made, you know, thousands and thousands of cases. And now with the proliferation of things like, Snapchat and and Reddit and just every, you know, Instagram and every social media you can think of, every way to to, make contact with children online. I know that you have gotten involved in that, both as an investigator and and as an educator. Talk about that evolution and then, and then talk about what parents and grandparents can do to make sure that their kids and grandkids aren't victimized.

Heidi Chance: 08:29

Yeah. So when we're talking about, this online epidemic, typically, traffickers in the past would have to physically be out in a location to recruit and groom. Now with the Internet and social media and games, they can copy and paste messages to hundreds of other profiles all day long and reach anyone who will take the bait, basically, if they're casting that fishing line. And that's what we've noticed because we do operations, chatting with sex buyers who are trying to purchase kids for sex as well as, oh, I call it catfishing pimps, where I have seven Facebooks. I have three Instagrams.

Heidi Chance: 09:08

I have a tag, MeetMe, Bumble, PlentyOfFish, Snapchat, Twitter, TikTok. I just opened up a Discord, all in undercover personas with the intent to have a trafficker recruit and groom me as an undercover instead of a live victim. And I've extradited traffickers nationwide, by the way. They don't just stay local. So I think that's a point to also make that they can sit on their butt at home, and they can just send these messages out and see who takes the bait.

Heidi Chance: 09:33

So for for parents and guardians and grandparents even, this this is what we need you to understand about this situation is there's there's a white van, but then this is also the white van. This is the new white van. This is the device, the computer in your hand where people can engage privately with your child and especially if you have a kid that begs you to let them download an app and you don't educate yourself about what that app is and how easy it is for a suspect to access that app and engage with your child in secret, you're basically opening the door for these predators, sex traffickers, and sex buyers to walk right into your house, into your kid's bedroom, and secretly talk to your kids. So that's why I wrote my book. It's called talk to them because I need parents to have conversations with their kids about these threats and digital, dangers.

Heidi Chance: 10:28

So then that way, they can almost self police themselves. Because if you're talking to them on a regular basis of, hey. If you have someone, start complimenting you and then they start testing you as far as how comfortable you are with them and they start asking personal information about you, and then they ask you if you're alright if if they send a picture of themselves to you because they want you to know what they look like, and then they're gonna ask you to send a picture of yourself to them. And then they move it into the conversation of, you know, have you ever been kissed before and and, you know, where this goes. So, if they are educated by their own parent about these things happening, about someone coming into their life on these devices or the game and saying, let's keep this conversation a secret.

Heidi Chance: 11:16

Do you mind deleting our conversation? I don't wanna meet your mom yet. Or, hey, let's use this emoji if your mom walks in the room or this, acronym to tell me that, you know, something's wrong and we you're gonna come back on the phone when you're done talking to your parent. We need them to know so they can recognize that happening when it's happening because it's not if, it is when. And then self police themselves to stop that conversation with that person and then go tell you about it because you have an open door and open communication as the parent or guardian with them that this is an expected thing, and I want you to come talk to me about it.

Heidi Chance: 11:52

And so that's super important because we obviously both have experienced being on the other end of the thing already happening, and it's too late at that point. And because this is so prevalent, and I can just tell you, when I first started investigating this crime, the average national age of of a person entering into the sex trafficking as a youth was 15. Today, nationally, it's 13. And just a couple of weeks ago, I was out with Phoenix PD on a couple operations, and we rescued a couple 11 and 12 year olds, which means these kids are entering this predicament even earlier, which means those conversations have to happen even earlier, like eight, nine, 10 years old at least. So then that way, this this luring into this situation doesn't happen in the first place.

Betsy Smith: 12:39

And this this grooming, this online grooming, it doesn't happen overnight, does it?

Heidi Chance: 12:47

Yeah. Traffickers are very skilled at investing time and getting to know you. I mean, that's part of the recruitment and grooming with any victim, whether it's a child or not. They're trying to learn everything they can about you, where your parents work, where your siblings go to school, how old are they, what kind of cars your parents drive. And then you you were thinking they're asking these questions because they wanna be in a relationship with you because it's, you know, their your impression that they like you.

Heidi Chance: 13:15

But really, they're asking these questions so they can flip the switch later on and threaten you later with, if you don't do what I say, I know where you live. Or if you don't do what I say, I'm gonna hurt your little sister. And that is a real thing, especially for the trafficking victims that these pimps are you know, they're pretty reliable. They're gonna do what they say they're gonna do.

Betsy Smith: 13:36

Now I I know most parents, grandparents, guardians, that I've talked to, they'll say, well, I understand. I know what Facebook is. I know what Instagram is. Most of them have no idea that online gaming is its own social media, basically. They they like you said, even you just started a a Discord account.

Betsy Smith: 14:00

And they parents and grandparents don't really understand that when they allow their 10 or 11 year old to do online gaming, that they're they might as well allow them to be texting the world. Am I correct on that?

Heidi Chance: 14:14

Yeah. I mean, it's it's it's an open door, especially if you don't have expectations and rules set in place that if they're gonna be on a game, it's gonna be in the room where I am so I can overhear what's going on. I'm not gonna let you just sit there with your headset on, talking to strangers in a room with your door closed. It needs to be like that. Also, as far as educating yourself about these games or these apps, there are companies out there that not only have devices like, a phone that, you know, looks like a smartphone and an Apple Watch type of watch.

Heidi Chance: 14:49

But these companies, Bark Technologies and Gabb, g a b b, Gabb Wireless, those devices that they create, you can get either the one with super parental controls or the ones without Internet at all. So if it is a reason that you need to give them a phone because they arrive home before you do and you want them to be safe in case of an emergency, get them a phone that doesn't have the Internet at all. And both of those companies as well as the collective app, which is another, partnership of mine, they, all educate parents on a regular basis. So if you have a kid asking you, mom, can I download the friendly app? You can go bark.

Heidi Chance: 15:29

What is the friendly app? And how dangerous is it for my child to have? And it literally will you know, the blog articles on both all three of those websites really go in-depth about how dangerous it is, how easy it is for a person to pose as a peer, create a profile, all those things. And it is a job of a parent or guardian these days to be, educated on all these things.

Betsy Smith: 15:52

What do you say to, a parent who says, oh, my son or daughter? They would never do that. They would never talk to somebody online. I just I just can't imagine. I just want them to play their little game and and, maybe have an Instagram account, but they would never do that.

Betsy Smith: 16:08

Talk to that parent for a minute.

Heidi Chance: 16:10

Yeah. I think it isn't that your child has that idea to engage with a stranger. It's the stranger who's seeking out your child that has the idea. And they're the ones that are actively commenting on their posts or actively trying to message them or like everything or get them to notice them so that they can, engage with them in a private way. It it is the bad guy's idea to delete messages.

Heidi Chance: 16:33

So if you even have a situation where you find, you know, your child sent an image or was sent an image and you wanna call the police and and you're mad because you, you know, you talk to them about this and here they are doing it. The idea came from them, the bad guy, not your kid. So, really, that's who you should be mad at. And, also, if you freak out, the way that you act is gonna matter. The next time this happens, they won't talk to you about it because they don't wanna get in trouble.

Heidi Chance: 16:59

And then they will be in a situation where, unfortunately, they may have sent an even more inappropriate image. And now that person on the other end is gonna extort them for money, and then they're gonna end up, you know, doing worse, to themselves because they don't wanna deal with you being mad, and they can't come up with the money. And we have kids committing suicide over that. So very dangerous.

Betsy Smith: 17:20

And I think it's so abhorrent to, most people that, an adult would wanna have sex with a child. You know? This is something law enforcement we see every day. But, you know, let folks know how prevalent that is, and that is absolutely the age doesn't matter. The sex doesn't matter.

Betsy Smith: 17:46

There's some adult who wants to do something to any age of a child. Correct?

Heidi Chance: 17:52

Yeah. In fact, I had a stat the other day that said one in five children will be sexually solicited online. One in five out of all kids.

Betsy Smith: 18:03

So how does a parent and I know you've got the book. Yeah. But how does somebody as a parent or grandparent or guardian, how do they start that awkward conversation?

Heidi Chance: 18:13

Yeah. So I modeled the book, like, a how to guide modeled after how I would conduct an interview as a forensic interviewer with, a victim, a victim that doesn't wanna talk to me about all of these things. And getting through to them, the rapport, the timing, you know, making it relatable to, you know, the thing that you want to talk about. Make it be about something someone else. Make it be you know, I was watching a Instagram reel and this woman came on and talked about this happening to their kid.

Heidi Chance: 18:43

What do you think about that? And don't, like, put them on the spot, but make it be about that other thing, but also inquiring and discussion and generating that conversation about what you really wanted them to know and learn and talk about. I think that's the best advice.

Betsy Smith: 19:00

Now you are also you talk to parents. You train parents. You also train police officers. Talk about talk about that part of your busy life for a couple minutes.

Heidi Chance: 19:11

Yeah. So when I retired in '21, I started my own business called A Chance for Awareness, and I have my website, achanceforawareness.com. And I have two missions. One mission is, very important to me to continue, community awareness about sex trafficking because I need an informed public who are gonna be potential jurors to hear education about it so that when they're called for their service to serve on a jury and they hear a detective testify, like I said, about this lifestyle that they truly believe in that, it is possible for this person to be a victim and possible for them to be freely walking down the road with the phone in their hand, but they're still trapped and not free to leave. I need that.

Heidi Chance: 19:54

I need that because I need to have these victims get justice and hold these traffickers accountable. So in addition to that, I have a class on modern day situational awareness and an actual, you know, online class about the parenting, online safety, that kind of thing. And then on the other side, my second mission is law enforcement training. I've got sixteen years working this crime, just this crime, twenty eight years in law enforcement so far and counting, and I have a lot to share. I have I've been on the couch with a sex buyer who's touched me inappropriately, and I have had to play that off and still go on with the with the deal and get the arrest.

Heidi Chance: 20:32

And so I think training other female law enforcement officers about being a female you see in all of these sticky situations that I've been in and showing examples and talking through what could happen and how to have this conversation and what if a pimp shows up and all of the things that are involved in staying safe as a female undercover. I have a female undercover school that I host virtually and also can come if a law enforcement agency needs that training specifically. And then I have a class for patrol on recognizing sex trafficking. I didn't have a class in '98 about human trafficking. I'm pretty sure you didn't.

Heidi Chance: 21:09

In Phoenix, we didn't even start teaching our own patrol officers how to recognize sex trafficking until 02/2014. So you have a whole bunch of cops out there that were taught to look for bad guys in the form of a gangster or a drug dealer, and pimps completely ignored. And the pimps know it. I actually caught a Facebook live where a pimp was basically look at me look at me and there's five patrol cars in the background and he's bragging that they don't see him. He's throwing money around.

Heidi Chance: 21:35

He just pushed his prostitute into the wall and he's, you know, everyone's commenting on you're so cool. They don't see him because we weren't trained to. So I have a class on how to actually recognize sex trafficking going on in your random, you know, loud noise complaint at a hotel or a domestic violence call or a vehicle stop. And then I have a class on interrogating these suspects, as well as interviewing these types of victims because it's a different kind of interview than a sexual assault or a child sexual assault type of child abuse interview. Those kids disclose.

Heidi Chance: 22:08

Those kids wanna tell somebody. These kids are in love with their pimp. They don't wanna say nothing. And to get them to talk to you is a skill that, you know, needs to be, you know, supplemented with expert training. And then I have a new case, or a new class that I just came up with.

Heidi Chance: 22:26

It's called, tackling a trafficker and taking their treasures. Because I'm only one detective in one part of the world, and I've already had four traffickers that I've put in prison or jail. They did their time, they got out, and they went right back to trafficking. So, obviously, putting them in prison didn't do anything. So in that, now I'm teaching instead of just relying on a victim based case, we do a parallel case of a financial crimes investigation and go after them for money laundering and legal enterprise, which is a whole other thing that most cops aren't even trained on either.

Heidi Chance: 22:59

And so that's my latest class, and I have some other classes. But, training is definitely a passion of mine, and I really love doing that and sharing with other agencies all that I know.

Betsy Smith: 23:10

You know, with your expertise, what what do you think we need to do as a society to stop this incredible appetite that, you know, some in our, among our myths have, have for sexually abusing children, for trafficking women? It just it seems to be such a giant problem. It sometimes it gets politicized. And, again, there are those people who say, hey. It's sex work.

Betsy Smith: 23:43

You know, leave leave it's a victimless crime, all that. You know, we're looking at the whole big picture. What do you think we need to do as a society?

Heidi Chance: 23:53

Yeah. I think, you know, just like you're in the airport and they have the, speaker say every now and again or at least they used to, if you see something, say something, like an unattended bag or whatever. I think reporting, I think that's the only way we're gonna hold these sex buyers and traffickers accountable is if people actually report. And it isn't like you have to have the police car show up at your house. You can call it in and provide your phone number so that we can ask you follow-up questions just in case you witness something else that we we need to know.

Heidi Chance: 24:22

But call. Make the call report. On my website, I have a resource. It's called my sex trafficking indicators list. It's a whole list of things that might be going on with someone you know.

Heidi Chance: 24:33

And if you, you know, see that list and you see two or three things on that list that are going on with your best friend, they might actually be in the empathy stages of being recruited and groomed by a trafficker And interfering with that going on and and saving them from all of that is a good thing. So reporting. Now where do you report? So the national human trafficking hotline is all the way in Washington, DC. I'm in Phoenix.

Heidi Chance: 24:58

It takes a minute. That could be three or four days before your complaint goes from DC to me, the right detective. So, some states are coming up with their own hotline, and Arizona is one of those. We have our hotline, and it's managed 247 in multiple languages and and those kind of things. But if it is a crime where you see going on in progress, bypass all the hotlines.

Heidi Chance: 25:21

Just call 911. That is what they're for, and definitely provide your information so we can contact you in case you witness something else.

Betsy Smith: 25:30

Hey. Where can people, where can they find you? Where can they buy the book? Where can they reach out?

Heidi Chance: 25:36

Yeah. So I have my website, atransferawareness.com. That's where I host my online classes. Then I also have, you know, bookings for if you wanna hire me as a presenter or a trainer for a law enforcement agency, but also private businesses. Like, I've got a realtor, conference that I'm gonna speak at because I've noticed that, especially with Super Bowl coming up, traffickers know that we are word to the wise that they use hotels.

Heidi Chance: 26:02

So now they're they're renting short term rentals. They're in Airbnbs, VVROs, and those people, are property management companies or realtors that own some of those as well as private individuals, and they need to know that there might be human trafficking, a house prostitution going on in your short term rental and what to do about it. Lots and lots of, reasons for the human trafficking training outside of even law enforcement and definitely education to the public. The book is available on amazon.com or pretty much everywhere that, it's being sold at or where you can buy books. I'm also having this translated in Spanish.

Heidi Chance: 26:39

I met a female officer on LinkedIn that, is a cop over at a university in Mississippi, and she is a translator also. So she's going to translate it in print copy as well as an audio version so that I can reach a demographic of parents that really also need this information. And I think that's everything. Yeah.

Betsy Smith: 26:59

Well, Heidi, I'll I'll tell you what. We cannot thank you enough for bringing this important topic to us and for spending time with us today. And if you'd like more information about the National Police Association, visit us at nationalpolice.org.

Narrator: 27:16

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Narrator: 27:54

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