Beyond 'Raid And Rescue': Rime To Acknowledge The Damage Being Done

Raid and rescue operations are widely portrayed as heroic efforts to save the innocent from the evil. But, as this BTS series makes clear, the reality is not so clear-cut.

- Kimberly Walters

Abolitionists at Work

The police shout. They storm into an upscale house wearing bullet-proof jackets with guns poised to fire. They scream in Spanish and the people inside drop to the ground. The camera pans the floor where several black men and women sprawl face down. The police begin to handcuff those on the floor one-by-one. From between the legs of a policeman, the camera focuses on two blonde-haired, white men. They too lie face down, but one raises his head, looks around, finds the videographer, winks enthusiastically at the camera, and smiles.

This man is an American who has orchestrated this raid in the Dominican Republic as a sting operation to ‘rescue children from sex trafficking’. In a short video documenting events, viewers follow him and his American colleagues as they go undercover on the island nation as sex tourists. We watch as they pay money across a table strewn with beer bottles to buy sex and then pretend to get caught in the police sting alongside the ‘traffickers’. We learn that the Americans posing as customers later fly home to the US as the Dominicans are jailed for agreeing to sell them sex. The video ends with stark white words against a black background: ‘26 victims liberated, 8 traffickers arrested. All thanks to your donations’.