Kiwanis Club honors detective for fighting sex trafficking

For his efforts to thwart human trafficking, Detective Joshua Gilfry is the 2018 Kiwanis’ Officer of the Year for the Concord Police Department.

“Detective Gilfry has worked tirelessly to bring human trafficking suspects to justice and to provide assistance to the victims of their crimes,” said Lt. Michael Kindorf, who nominated him. “His dedication, ingenuity and never give up attitude bring great credit to himself and the law enforcement profession.”

Once assigned to the Violence Suppression Unit, Gilfry decided to run a proactive sting with two main objectives: target the pimps who are trafficking sex workers and identify and rescue the victims. He used fictitious social media accounts to contact pimps and arrange for meetings with sex workers the pimps were controlling. Gilfry met four human trafficking victims at an area hotel, where law enforcement officers and victim advocates intercepted them.

The Task Force arrested four individuals for felony pimping and pandering charges. Gilfry uncovered enough evidence to charge two with felony human trafficking.

Later in 2018, Gilfry reviewed an arrest by officers of the Concord Special Enforcement Team. He wrote search warrants on the cell phones of two women arrested for prostitution. Although the women initially denied being human trafficking victims, Gilfry uncovered that the young women were being trafficked by a violent street gang from the Central Valley.

He found that this gang was trafficking woman to make money for the purchase and sale of illegal drugs and to provide money to gang members in prison. His investigation identified additional human trafficking victims living in other cities.

Gilfry traveled throughout the state to put together one comprehensive case. His work led to formal charges against the main suspect, who is awaiting trial.