Undercover detective recounts horrors of sex trafficking

Sep 27, 2018

"Any of these girls could be my friend, and she was a really good friend."  

This is the account of Brentwood Police Detective, Adrian Breedlove.  

Breedlove works undercover and rescues women and children, trapped in sex trafficking.  

"He knew that she was pregnant and was beating her in the abdomen area, and kicking her," Breedlove recalls. 

He has seen the faces of the victims, the battered and abused.  

"One of our victims had her face broken by her trafficker in seven places," he said. "He choked her out a couple of times."  

Breedlove said human trafficking is mobile and on the move. Brentwood, or any affluent community, is not immune. 

"They just basically travel a circuit around from city to city and we're just one of those stops along the way," says Breedlove.  

Along the interstate, including but not limited to Atlanta, Birmingham, Chattanooga, in Nashville and Brentwood, it's happening.

According to Breedlove, traffickers run women from place to place, a city where there's high demand, and a hotel that provides cover. 

"People are so surprised this would actually happen in Brentwood, Franklin, Williamson county," he says. 

Traffickers line up clients using the internet. The online options for underage, illegal sex are disturbing.  

"They will put out feelers in cities they're not even at. Depending on what the results are, how fast the texts and calls start coming in, that determines where they're going to go to next," Breedlove says. 

In the last two years Breedlove has led multiple stings at local hotels.  

He remembers one clearly. 

"The victim, the trafficker, and the other girl all came in on Megabus." 

They traveled from Atlanta, into Nashville, and then got another ride.  

"A Lyft or an Uber to Brentwood, to the hotel here," said Breedlove. 

His arrests have ended in the trafficking convictions of Eric Hamilton and Joseph Jeffries. Hamilton's trial and guilty verdict was the first of its kind in Williamson County.   

At the end of each day Breedlove said his focus is simple. 

"Our job is to root that out and stop it," he said.

And return the humanity to the women who need it so badly.   

"If you personalize it, than everyone of them becomes personal and you want to do your best to help them."

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