Dr. Sandie Morgan is joined by Corinne St. Thomas Stowers as the two discuss the role that fusion centers play in protecting a community and its children from sexual exploitation and online human trafficking.

Corinne St. Thomas Stowers

Corinne St. Thomas Stowers is the Supervising Tactical Intelligence Analyst assigned to the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center. She is supporting the tactical analysis unit, primarily focused on the transnational organized crime and violent crime threats. Corinne has nearly 20 years of experience in law enforcement. She began with Westminster Police Department, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office in the Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit, and at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, working child sexual exploitation cases as a tactical cyber analyst. Corrine currently holds a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice, and a master’s in social work. She was recognized in 2022 by the National Fusion Center Association as Intelligence Analyst of the Year, as well as the Medal of Valor recipient from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for her role in Operation Red Zone, the largest Orange County Law Enforcement proactive human trafficking operation.

Key Points

• Fusion Centers were established post 9/11 and function as sharing hubs between law enforcement and public and private sector partners. The information shared aids in disrupting threats of online exploitation and human trafficking across the nation.


• As parents and guardians, it is important to stay educated on the devices and applications that children are using and talk about technology every day.


• The parameters and boundaries of technology use in a home may change as a child ages and their maturity levels rise, however it is important to continually set parameters and boundaries to keep our children safe online.


• Parents or guardians may not learn about the dangers their child has faced online until they have already occurred. Because of this, it is necessary to be proactive and take note of changed behaviors their child is exhibiting and relay the information to law enforcement.


• To access resources and support, visit NCMEC, linked below.

Resources

• Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center (OCIAC)


• National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC)


• National Fusion Center Association (NFCA)


• NCMEC Cyber Tip Line


• Susan Kennedy Ensure Justice Plenary

Transcript

Sandra Morgan 0:14

Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking podcast here at Vanguard University’s Global Center for Women in Justice in Orange County, California. This is episode #323, with Corinne St. Thomas Stowers. She is currently the Supervising Tactical Intelligence Analyst assigned to the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center. The initials for that are OCIAC, OCIAC. So when we say OCIAC in the rest of the podcast, we’re talking about Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center, and she’s supporting the tactical analysis unit, primarily focused on the transnational organized crime and violent crime threats. Corinne has nearly 20 years of experience in law enforcement. She began with Westminster Police Department, the Orange County District Attorney’s Office in the Human Exploitation and Trafficking Unit, and at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, working child sexual exploitation cases as a tactical cyber analyst. Corrine currently holds a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice, and a master’s in social work. She was recognized in 2022 by the National Fusion Center Association as Intelligence Analyst of the Year, as well as the Medal of Valor recipient from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for her role in Operation Red Zone, the largest Orange County Law Enforcement proactive human trafficking operation. Corrine, welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast.

Corinne St. Thomas Stowers 2:15

Thank you for having me. I’m so excited to be here.

Sandra Morgan 2:17

I remember the first time you came to a human trafficking class here at Vanguard to teach and guest lecture. You’re still coming, you were in Ensure Justice just a couple months ago. Although this is our first podcast together, I’m thinking we’re going to do this more than once.

Corinne St. Thomas Stowers 2:37

Oh! I’m so excited to be here. I’ve always been such a huge supporter of Vanguard and the Center, and everything going on here, and it’s just great to be here today.

Sandra Morgan 2:46

Well tell me, to start with, what is a fusion center? As soon as I heard that, I thought it was a culinary art school for Asian/Mexican food chef’s.

Corinne St. Thomas Stowers 3:02

Okay, yeah! I know, I think fusion centers, we do such incredible work across the nation. To give a little backstory to fusion centers, we were established post 9/11 as an information sharing conduit between local, state, and federal law enforcement, as well as the public and private sector partnerships. So it was a way for us to share information, timely, actionable, information to disrupt threats across the nation. We’re unique here in Orange County in that we have our own fusion center assigned to Orange County. We are the only fusion center in the United States that is assigned to one singular county,

Sandra Morgan 3:39

I did not know that. I keep finding great things we’re doing here in Orange County. So a fusion center then, is like a place where we can understand a broad spectrum of data?

Corinne St. Thomas Stowers 3:57

It’s really kind of information that is ingested through the OCIAC from different avenues, whether it’s coming from the public or from law enforcement, and it’s analyzed, and then it’s shared with whoever may need to know that type of information. So it could be suspicious activity related to terrorism activity, it could be suspicious activity associated to drug trafficking or any other type of information that we think that there’s some partner that may need to know about that information. We review it, we analyze that information, and then share it with partners.

Sandra Morgan 4:29

In our context right now, and for when you were at Ensure Justice in March, we’re talking about how do we build a better plan for protecting our community and especially our children, from online human trafficking, sexual exploitation, the NCMEC report that just came out, speak to that?

Corinne St. Thomas Stowers 4:52

Sure. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children does a phenomenal job with reviewing information in relation to a wide variety of topics that are juvenile based, and one of them is exploitation of children with online activity associated to it, because of their exploited children’s division, the information that they have. The report and the information that comes out, really shows the egregiousness of what’s happening with online activity in our kiddos and that the numbers are scary, they’re really frightening. And I always say, take data with a grain of salt. We really look at it as what’s going on online and how do we measure that? I know in our involvement with like law enforcement and reporting, is that there’s a lot of potential criminal activity associated with online activity and our kiddos. As kids are more well versed in applications and information online, and have the accessibility to social media and different platforms, the opportunity for possible criminal activity goes up, and I think those numbers start to reflect that a bit.

Sandra Morgan 5:55

I’m not just a parent, I’m a grandparent, and I want to protect my kids. As I talk to other grandparents, and parents, this is a common concern. When I talk to them, they feel overwhelmed, and they want to understand how in the world they’re going to be able to keep their kids safe, because they learn about one app, and then three more pop up. They go listen to a speaker who has a book, and so they buy the book, but by the time they actually are reading it, they begin to understand that’s last year’s. How do I stay up to date right now?

Corinne St. Thomas Stowers 6:42

I think that’s such a great question, and I definitely receive similar based questions from the public when I’m talking to parents and guardians as well. The best kind of avenue for dealing with that, because it is so multifaceted, is that if we have the ability to provide devices and kids being on these applications, then the education component for ourselves as adults is really important. So I always encourage, get comfortable with the applications, look at the applications. As an adult, download them on your device, and maybe look and go through them. How do you log in? Or maybe take a look at all their terms of service, and the policies with these applications, and what they actually say, because there’s a lot of information there. I think that’s always a great little practice, is how many of us have actually looked at some of the terms of agreement for the service of some of these applications? In terms of your question of the evolution of applications, one da