For the second time this year, The Exodus Road is sending volunteers to the streets to look for signs of human trafficking.

The Colorado Springs-based nonprofit, which did a three-month pilot of TraffickWatch that began in March, recently embarked on its second phase. The organization plans to bring the program to several other cities, starting with Phoenix and possibly expanding internationally.

Exodus Road is accepting volunteers to take four- to five-hour shifts on Friday and Saturday nights to drive around areas where human trafficking activity is suspected.

The organization has partnered with experts in the area who have backgrounds in cyberintelligence who created a system that mines the Internet for addresses that may be associated with such activity, based on keywords and phrases. The tool can pick up an ad for illegal services on a website then put the address associated with the ad on a map for volunteers to drive by. They look for people who are bruised, or dressed inappropriately for their age or the weather.

Anything that seems suspicious is recorded, and tips are sent to police.

“What we do know is it’s having an impact,” said Kevin Campbell, vice president of global operations for The Exodus Road.

Forty-three volunteers provided 72 tips to Colorado Springs police during the spring TraffickWatch, and a handful of those were significant enough for police to open investigations, Campbell said. Police have told The Exodus Road they cannot divulge information about what they’ve done with those tips to protect the investigations, Campbell added.

Everything Exodus Road does is driven by strategy, Campbell said. People are sent out in teams and they don’t approach possible victims or perpetrators or get involved in any way; They simply look for suspicious activity and look out for their community.

Sites of interest could be truck stops, home addresses, and “places you would never expect to see” human trafficking. “The bigger picture of human trafficking is that it’s not always what it seems to be,” Campbell said.

Human trafficking has become an increasingly noteworthy social justice issue as people have become aware that it’s a problem in the United States, in Colorado and in their own backyards rather than something restricted to countries overseas.

The Colorado Springs Police Department has significantly increased its human trafficking efforts in the past two years. In 2014, the first year of operation for the Police Department’s Human Trafficking Task Force, 26 children and 44 adults were rescued.

To volunteer for TraffickWatch, contact volunteer@theexodusroad.com or go to theexodusroad.com.

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Contact Kassondra Cloos: 636-0362

Twitter: @Kassondra Cloos