 Bemidji High School hosted a panel last night to discuss how to stop human trafficking in our community. Lakeland News reporter Cheryl Moore shares what everyone should be on the lookout for to help young teens. Last night's panel brought out people from all over to talk about a subject most people don't want to think about. Human trafficking and exploitation in northern Minnesota. We do get clients, but numbers-wise it's just hard to pinpoint. Three panelists from different help agencies led the community in the talk. The discussion started with a video about how teens averaging in ages from 12 to 14 get exploited. They talked about how in this day and age, most predators are reaching out to them on social media. There was also a discussion about the people known as buyers, which are usually professional men between the ages of 30s and 50s living in the community. We have seen it locally in our hotels. We've done two sex trafficking that has developed from reactive investigations at the hotels. Panelists say the best thing the community can do is to educate themselves on the signs of an exploited teen and be alert. Looking for things such as older and younger people together in the hotels that don't fit in a familial type setting and then that type of controlling behavior a lot of the times and just really monitoring parties that may be trafficked are paying attention to their self-olds, have multiple self-olds. You don't necessarily need to approach them or put yourself in a situation, but I really believe if you see something out of the ordinary, it doesn't hurt to say something to somebody. Another way the panelists say the public can help is by reaching out to legislators and asking them to add more penalties for predators and buyers. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.