‘Child Trafficking’ Sting Video Turns Out To Be Toy Drive
Human trafficking panic gets a holiday twist in the latest faux trafficking scare to hit social media.
In a December 16 Instagram post that received more than 190,000 likes, user Ernest Carter shared a video of a Coca-Cola delivery truck that he claimed was found “full of kids.” Carter said the truck was found in Cicero, Illinois, and that the video showed police getting the children off the truck.
“The same video and false claim have circulated elsewhere on Instagram, X, Facebook, Threads, TikTok, Bluesky, YouTube, Rumble and Gettr — including in Spanish and French,” AFP reports.
For his part, Carter apologized “for being mislead and misleading.” In a follow-up video, he said that his initial post about trafficked children was wrong but there were two abandoned kids found on the truck.
This was also wrong.
The truck and the police depicted were actually outside a mall in Davenport, Iowa, where the local police association was running a toy donation drive.
Davenport Police Department spokesperson Owen Farrell said that the video depicted “no criminal investigation” and reports about child trafficking were “false” and “fake news,” according to AFP.
“The Davenport Police Association is sponsoring and hosting the 22nd annual Christmas toy drive to support Family Resources Inc.,” local news station KWQC reported on December 15. “The annual event raises money and collects new toys at Christmas for children involved in Family Resources Domestic Violence Shelters, Child Advocate programs (victims of sex assaults and other at-risk programs), and supports the Family Resources Adopt a Family Program.”
I can’t make out anything about the toy drive that would have led any reasonable person to conclude that this was a child trafficking sting. But this is how far down the trafficking hysteria rabbit hole Americans have gone: the mere fact of police next to a truck is enough to spawn human trafficking claims.
Despite the story’s debunking, some c
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