An annual conference designed to help train members of law enforcement on combating child exploitation was cancelled this year as part of the Trump administration’s massive spending cuts to the Justice Department, leaving several prosecutors and law enforcement officers fuming, The Guardian reported Saturday.
“We’re left figuring out how to survive without it,” a law enforcement official told The Guardian, speaking with the outlet under the condition of anonymity. “We have had to make cuts, redo things, and go back to other funding sources to beg and plead for money.”
Known as the National Law Enforcement Training on Child Exploitation, the annual conference was cancelled this year as part of the Trump administration’s termination of hundreds of millions of dollars in DOJ spending. The Trump admin terminated $820 million in DOJ grants within three months of his swearing in last year.
The cancellation of the conference on child exploitation, however, hit home for a number of law enforcement officials, many of whom told The Guardian that its cancellation will put “vulnerable children at risk” and impede “efforts to bring child predators to justice,” the outlet reported.
“If your jurisdiction gets hit with one of these cases, what do you do? These conferences teach you,” said a state prosecutor, speaking with The Guardian on the condition of anonymity.
“They also provide contacts: I meet instructors who’ve handled these cases before, who can maybe talk me through the investigation. Not having the conference really hinders our ability to kind of address new challenges as they come in.”
The Trump administration has frequently boasted of its efforts to target those who exploit children, particularly the Department of Homeland Security, which often publishes releases of its efforts to “stop the exploitation” of migrant children.
However, when it came to funding training for law-enforcement officials to combat child exploitation, one federal prosecutor said the administration has almost always rejected such requests.
“We need to justify all travel for training, trial preparation and meeting with victims,” the federal prosecutor said, who specializes in crimes against children, speaking with The Guardian under the condition of anonymity. “We need to justify why it’s ‘core mission’, and the answer is almost always no.”