It's hard to believe that crimes as inhumane as human trafficking could be going on around you.

"We should not be naive to think that because we live in a fairly safe town that there's nobody, that nothing like this happens here," said Kelley Lucero from the Shelter.

"Columbia is a drawing card for a lot of different nationalities, different background people, through our schools here, colleges or what not, so it's an area that would be conducive to something like that," Boone County Sheriff Mike Stubbs said.

"We're the main thoroughfare between K.C. and St. Louis," said Lucero. "Who knows who passes through I-70 on a given day and what their fate may be."

It's known to be a highly organized crime. If a suspect happens to be a victim of human trafficking, finding that out in the investigation becomes as complex as finding a needle in a haystack.

"We have this suspect of performing sexual acts for money: prostitution," said Stubbs. "If we find out they may also be the victim of human trafficking, or someone brought them into this country, we look at that and investigate that as far as we can go. We don't go into that in deep detail because it's immigrations job."

"I don't know that those questions get asked and maybe that's where the problem lies," said Tom Dresner of the Columbia Police Department. "If those questions aren't being asked at the time of their arrest, 'hey are you here voluntarily' and all that,' then that's certainly a possibility."

Often, officers don't ask the questions because they simply don't know that they need to.

"One of the biggest things that needs to happen is that local law enforcement needs to have the training and support that they need to help trafficking victims and to recognize the signs,"said Jennifer Kimball, the President Stop Traffic.

And that's just what Detective Young of the Independence Police Department is doing. He sent out letters to every law enforcement agency in the western half of Missouri. Columbia was one of the cities that responded.

"Human Trafficking affects every community: the smallest communities, rural communities and big city communities," said Detective Jason Young of the Independence Police Department. "To the best of my knowledge, with my training and experience, these cases in Columbia involve human trafficking victims." 

With federal money, Independence is providing free training to officers and assisting in cases in other areas, and the problem is growing fast.

"It's going to explode," said Young. "We're going to get complaints consistently, whereas before the word got out, nobody knew what human trafficking was."

"Twenty-five years ago, no one knew what domestic violence was," said Trish Stringer of Hope House. "It was abuse, or it was assault and people started to learn okay this is what domestic violence is and began to identify it and call it what it was. And we're in the same boat now with human trafficking." 

"Certainly, anybody that has the experience in doing that, has advanced training in doing that can certainly help other law enforcement agencies," said Tom Thomason with Columbia Police. "I think that's what we can gain from Independence and this Federal Task force."

Knowledge and training are key in stopping a crime of such detail, however, the passion may be more important. 

"As human beings, I would say we have an obligation to do whatever we possibly can to try to end this and I do believe that we can," said Kimball.

In order to end human trafficking shelters are helping to get the victims to safety so there isn't a chance of them falling back in the trap.

"We try to give them everything that they need, so that they can get there life back together," said Stringer. "So if they have daycare needs, we can take care of that, employment resources, we can help with that." 

And cops are training to find the victims, investigate the cases, and put the right people in jail.

"These victims are so beat down both mentally and physically that they don't even consider themselves victims, and that's a very lonely and dangerous place for them to be, " said Young. Lets collaborate, let's look for these victims, and once we find them, let's take care of the victims and put these guys in jail,

KOMU Spoke with Detective Jason Young on the phone earlier, he told us the Columbia Police Department has confirmed their training for the middle of January. Lastly, the MU group 'Stop Traffic' is currently organizing for its anti-human trafficking conference scheduled for March.