Latest news with #TheTribune-Democrat
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
'Pimps' and websites: AI-driven system has no legal standing yet in Pa., but delivers warnings to 'customers'
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – At noon on a regular Monday last month, a website showed about 80 sex-worker advertisements in the areas of Johnstown, Indiana and Altoona. A search in the Pittsburgh area showed a woman was willing to travel to Somerset County. Human Trafficking logo Nick Lembo, an executive director of Street Grace – a Georgia-based organization that uses a Microsoft-developed platform to disrupt human trafficking – searched the website and shared his screen over Zoom with The Tribune-Democrat. There were male and transgender categories on the website to search. Lembo went to the 'men seeking women' category, which produced a cascade of ads. 'Believe it or not, around the lunch hour can be busier,' he said. 'So it could start picking up right now in your area. And then sometimes guys are getting off work at 4 p.m., so it can start then. And I'd say most of the time, probably from 5 p.m. through 10 p.m. at night are the busiest times.' However, the women available through the ads are often not engaging in these transactions of their own volition, he said. 'Most of these women are being forced against their wills by pimps,' he said. 'There's this attitude that sex work is a legitimate profession, and these girls are just doing it on their own, and these guys (who purchase) will often say, 'Well, I know they are doing it on their own.' And the reality is, they really don't, because these girls are never going to give up their pimps. 'The pimps want to stay way in the shadows,' he said. Statistics are unclear on the scope of the human trafficking problem. Research supported by the National Institute of Justice in 2020 revealed that labor and sex trafficking data appearing in the FBI's national Uniform Crime Reporting Program may significantly understate the extent of human trafficking crimes in the United States. 'Researchers concluded that human trafficking incidents identified in law enforcement and social service agency records likely represented only a fraction of the actual incidence,' the institute's website says. 'Forcing these women' Using an artificial intelligence-human hybrid system called Transaction Intercept, Lembo and teams of civilians working with Street Grace post decoy ads on websites where men go to purchase sex. Street Grace also offers the same platform, at no cost, to law enforcement. State Sen. Cris Dush has been a proponent of using the technology in Pennsylvania; however, so far, it has not been used in the commonwealth for human trafficking prosecutions, Lembo said. Lembo and others working with Street Grace engage with men initiating conversations with their decoy ads and attempt to 'crack some humanity' into them, Lembo said. In one case, he spoke to a U.S. soldier who had returned briefly from deployment. He explained to the man that he was not law enforcement. ' 'We are here to protect you, actually, because if you are caught, this will affect you socially and professionally,' I said. That got to him,' Lembo said. 'I didn't realize it later that he was a soldier, and many guys in the military know their career is very important to them.' The soldier shared with Lembo that he 'was just looking for some comfort.' He had returned home from deployment, his girlfriend had broken up with him, and he was not scheduled to be home for long. Lembo warned him. 'I said, 'You need to be careful because there are pimps on these websites, and that's who is forcing these women,' ' Lembo said. 'He said, 'Honestly, I didn't know that. ... I'm going to warn my buddies about these websites.' ' If a potential buyer is unwilling to listen, and if Lembo has enough information, then he'll turn it over to police. In other cases, he can be successful in changing a buyer's mind by educating them about human trafficking. 'There's somebody there who still wants to listen to some reason, and probably the biggest thing we run into is educating these men into understanding that most of these women are being forced against their wills by pimps to have sex with them,' he said. Force, fraud or coercion At times, victims or people close to victims will call the National Human Trafficking Hotline, the top Google result for help. Victims from Cambria and Somerset counties have called the hotline and spoken to someone on the other end – such as Malika Said, a hotline supervisor – who will begin the conversation by asking whether the caller is in a safe place where they aren't being monitored by their trafficker. Said is then obligated to tell callers about the hotline's mandated reporting policies – the hotline must report acts of violence heard over the phone or discussions of minors being abused or neglected. And then Said gives them a basic summary of what trafficking is and asks the caller whether their situation aligns with that; trafficking situations involve force, fraud or coercion. 'And then we let the callers take it from there,' she said. 'And we assess their needs and provide whatever it is that they want.' Said may call a local shelter while on the phone with a caller and say: 'We have this person who's on the phone and they are looking for a safe place to stay tonight; can you help them?' 'We don't want the victims to be calling all these places on their own and just get rejected,' she said, 'especially if all the shelters are full, so we try to see if we can connect them to a place first, and if they are OK with that, then we connect them in a three-way call.' The hotline may also connect callers with case managers from local human service agencies, who can provide access to housing, food support, securing a job – any service that may eliminate the vulnerability that a trafficker is exploiting. 'A lot of times, people are recruited into the trafficking situations because they have certain vulnerabilities, whether it's economic or social vulnerabilities,' she said. 'Because of these vulnerabilities, they will get recruited into a situation where they are forced to do things they don't want to do, and because of all these limitations that the trafficker sets on them, they feel it's hard to get out of the situation.' If a victim relies on a trafficker for food or housing, for example, it's difficult for the victim to leave that situation on his or her own. 'There's a lot of times that we do get callers who are ready to leave, but find it very difficult so we talk them through the possibilities; we safety-plan with them, we give them the right resources,' according to Said. 'Not everyone is ready to report to police when they call the hotline, so we just talk through all the options that they have.' Both sex and labor Consolidating duplicate calls about the same case, the hotline identified a total of 12 likely victims across six trafficking situations in Cambria County from 2015 to 2022. 'Sometimes we have one situation/one victim call, but more often it's one situation/multiple victims,' National Human Trafficking Hotline spokeswoman Sabrina Thulander said. The hotline's data are not representative of all trafficking in Cambria County, only of the cases that are reported and identified by the hotline. The volume of calls can be affected by factors including awareness of trafficking as an issue and awareness of what help is available, Thulander said. The Cambria County cases were almost entirely situations and victims of sex trafficking, she said. More recent data are available, but it has not yet undergone the same level of validation as the data from previous years, she said. In Somerset County, the hotline identified three likely victims of trafficking from 2015 to 2022. In those cases, two of the three victims reported they were a victim of both sex and labor trafficking, Thulander said. 'I think with labor it tends to be more fraud, whereas, with sex trafficking, it's force or coercion,' she said. Labor trafficking can occur through a regular job posting, according to Said. 'They don't really outline what's happening and people are desperate for work, and they get sucked into it,' she said. 'There will be recruiters for some farming industries and so they will kind of recruit you into the trafficking situation, and it might be similar to a regular farming position, but you don't know the difference between the two. 'Sometimes it could also be for modeling; it can be a modeling job posting, but then you get recruited into it and all of a sudden you are in a sex trafficking situation.' 'Investigating ... cases' For Pennsylvania as a whole, from 2015 to 2022, the hotline identified a total of 2,566 likely victims and 1,487 individual situations of trafficking. Of those, 359 of the likely victims were victims of labor trafficking, and 1,933 were victims of sex trafficking. Some of the most commonly reported venues for labor trafficking were domestic work, restaurants and food service, and agriculture/farms/animal husbandry. Some of the most commonly reported venues for sex trafficking were illicit massage businesses, hotel/motel-based commercial sex, residence-based commercial sex, pornography, and internet-based commercial sex, Thulander said. Cambria County District Attorney Greg Neugebauer said human trafficking investigations are underway locally with help from people who make reports. 'We've had tips from doctors, school personnel, religious folks,' he said. 'And sometimes someone just sees something that just doesn't look right, and they call police. We've had a number of cases that have been prosecuted and, frankly, we are actively investigating several cases right now.' One case locally came about because a search warrant was executed on a completely unrelated matter, he said, 'and we discovered some things that were troubling.' In another instance, he said, a trafficker ended up going to jail for an unrelated crime, and authorities subsequently discovered that a person had been sex-trafficked. 'We've seen it locally,' he said. 'I think it exists everywhere, and I think the statistics are accurate that it goes unreported. A lot of it.'
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Political Empathy Lab tour returns to Johnstown
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – Professor Lia Howard and student Noah Kocher visited Johnstown last year during the hyper-political time of a president election. On Tuesday, they returned to the city as part of a University of Pennsylvania Political Empathy Lab tour during a slower-moving, off-year municipal election cycle. Although the political environments were different, the goal was the same. They and other participants set out to travel across the commonwealth, talking to people to learn about their concerns, beliefs, communities and political opinions. Howard, Kocher and seven other students from the Philadelphia school met for over an hour with Penn Club of Western Pennsylvania President and Johnstown native Donald Bonk, Johnstown City Councilwoman Laura Huchel and a reporter from The Tribune-Democrat at Balance Restaurant. They also toured the downtown neighborhood after the luncheon. 'Part of the reason I wanted to do it again was because the first group had such an amazing experience,' said Howard, with Penn's SNF Paideia Program. 'It was over 10 weeks. It was a lot longer. I wanted to do a concentrated experience (this year). It's not a national election, so I was really interested in what Pennsylvania was thinking 100-plus days into (President Donald) Trump's administration and what does it feel like when it's not the pressure of a national election. Do people go back to normal?' Kocher, a resident of Chester County in suburban Philadelphia, is the only student to participate in the lab both years. 'I feel like we're getting kinda similar conclusions in terms of it's really rewarding and good to go around and talk to people and hear from lots of people about how their lives are and what they care about,' Kocher said. He added: 'People are really willing to talk and eager to be listened to.' The students, including Wesley Liu, a philosophy major from the San Francisco Bay area, come from backgrounds that include living in major metropolitan regions. The weeklong tour is scheduled to include about a dozen stops in major cities, such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and towns such as Bedford and Connellsville, Fayette County. 'It's been really great. I think I've learned a lot about communicating to a wide variety of people from Pennsylvania,' Liu said. 'I think I came in with a certain impression of what Pennsylvania was going to look like – blue-collar, working-class, et cetera. (Monday), we visited Hazleton, and Allentown and all these places. There's just a wide array of people, whether it's Hispanic- speaking migrant population, or a group of firefighters or a family walking their dog in Scranton late at night. It's talking to a wide array of people and seeing what works and what doesn't in getting them to talk about what issues are important to them both locally and nationally.' Bonk talked to the students about Johnstown's history, the steel industry, immigration, eds and meds development, population decline, and culture. Huchel, a Princeton University graduate, provided insight into local government. 'For me, a group of highly educated students who are really caring about the political situation, it's invaluable to have them come to a place like Johnstown,' Huchel said. 'Johnstown, of course, is a political enigma in many ways. It's certainly a nexus of influence. Obviously during the last presidential election we saw numerous visits from both campaigns. 'I think people trying to understand Johnstown and understand what the needs of our people are is a prevalent question. I think taking that message out where more people can hear it is important.'
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Cambria County commissioners take first steps toward solar energy project at county prison
EBENSBURG, Pa. (WTAJ) — Cambria County leaders are taking early steps to bring solar energy to the county prison, an effort expected to cut electricity costs in half and reduce the facility's environmental footprint. According to our media partners at The Tribune-Democrat, during a public meeting Thursday, the county commissioners approved two letters of intent to begin development. One agreement is with Virginia-based Madison Energy Infrastructure for the installation of net-metered solar arrays. The second is with Solar Landscape, a New Jersey company, for a land-lease arrangement to install solar panels on the property. Officials say the prison, located on Manor Drive, was identified for the project due to its energy demands and hundreds of acres of flat, unused land. The jail operates on a roughly $15 million annual budget and consumes about 3 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year, costing the county around $300,000. Commissioners estimate that once the solar project is completed, the county could save roughly $150,000 annually in energy costs. 'This is just the first step,' Keith Rager, Commissioner who initiated the project early in his term, said . Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Paranormal crew finds ‘a lot of energy' at Grand Midway Hotel
WINDBER, Pa. (WTAJ) — A new show that recently debuted on Amazon Prime took a trip to the Grand Midway Hotel in Windber. Host of the Connecticut-based show, 'Dark Echoes Paranormal,' and creator Matt Kondracki and his team of paranormal investigators are currently filming their second season for a 2026 debut, according to WTAJ media partners at The Tribune-Democrat. Kondracki is a longtime paranormal investigator turned producer whose past credits include Animal Planet's 'The Haunted' series. The Grand Midway Hotel offers 32 rooms, with plenty of ghost stories to match, owner Blair Murphy said. Each room is decorated with a different eclectic and sometimes eerie theme, with the roof doubling as a Guinness World Record-holding Ouija board. What Kondracki said sets his series apart is that he knows little about the space's history, as well as the spiritual medium brought in to visit, who is also kept in the dark about their destination until they enter the door. Kondracki added that all of their footage is filmed live, with Erica Marks, their medium, brought in blindfolded. 'We want to show people this is real,' Kondracki said. 'We go to wherever the medium is drawn to.' For Marks, that seemed to be almost straight up to the hotel's third floor. Even before entering, she said she felt greeted by an energetic young male's presence, who seemed to be eager to show her from one themed room to the next. Marks also noted that there was a 'heavier' energy upstairs as well. 'There's a lot of energy here,' Marks said. 'You walk in here and it's almost the sensation of a funhouse. At times, it's like the walls are coming in on you. There's so much different energy, which sort of makes sense for a hotel.' Kondracki, who was writing notes on Marks' observations, was able to piece together part of one mystery with her. He later spoke with frequent Grand Midway Hotel guests to see how, and if, her observations blended with the hotel's storied past. The approach of 'Dark Echoes Paranormal' isn't centered on first impressions, with each episode involving a 24-hour visit. For Marks, that meant spending Saturday evening alongside paranormal investigators and anyone else at the Grand Midway Hotel. However, viewers will have to wait until 2026 to see how the trip went. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
16-05-2025
- Yahoo
Former Somerset DA Jeff Thomas denied new trial by appeals court
SOMERSET COUNTY, Pa. (WTAJ) — A state appeals court has denied former Somerset County District Attorney Jeff Thomas's attempt for a new trial. A panel of three Pennsylvania Superior Court judges released a 25-page decision, in which they stated they side with the rulings made during Thomas's 2023 trial and conviction, saying they found his list of claims had 'no merit,' according to WTAJ media partners at The Tribune-Democrat. The decision affirms the sentence that was handed to Thomas in August 2023, which was up to seven years in prison on convictions of strangulation, unlawful restraint, criminal respass and indecent assault. Thomas was separately acquitted of sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault by jurors during the trial. The conviction stemmed from an encounter with a Windber woman when Thomas walked into her home in 2021 and, despite being told to stay away, groped and assaulted her before she fled upstairs. Several of the appeals focused on evidence that Thomas argued was improperly excluded from the trial and rulings related to the Rape Shield Law, which protects victims of sex crimes from having details and allegations about their pasts used to discredit them in court, except for certain instances in which that history involves the defendant. Judges wrote that it wasn't the case in Thomas's 2023 case. Thomas attempted to have cellphone messages that the woman sent to another person, in one instance, an article of her clothing, used as evidence, and was overruled by the trial judge. Superior Court Judges Deborah Kunselman, Megan Sullivan and Jill Beck said their review showed the trial court did not abuse its discretion regarding the shield law. In fact, the law exists in Pennsylvania to prevent the type of evidence that Thomas looked to offer, they wrote, saying that evidence would only 'inflame' jurors' minds with details of little relevance to the charges in question. The court also ruled against the argument that the evidence was not sufficient enough to convict him of criminal trespass in relation to the night of the attack, saying that just because Thomas had visited the home before didn't mean he had 'license' to walk in any time he felt like it. 'In this case, (the woman) plainly testified that Thomas was not licensed or privileged to enter her residence on the night in question and that he was aware that he was not welcome in her home,' Beck wrote in the panel's opinion, adding that evidence showed Thomas himself later admitted he was 'not supposed to be there.' The panel also sided with the trial court's rulings on unlawful restraint, noting that the evidence was presented to support Thomas's conviction. Thomas is currently serving his sentence at SCI-Waymart in Wayne County. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
