Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall gave his first extended account of the multi-agency human trafficking sting in Atmore that netted 17 arrests over three days, calling it the product of a deliberate push by Escambia County law enforcement to police the Interstate 65 corridor.

The Atmore Police Department led the operation between October 1 and October 3 with the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office, alongside the Monroe and Clarke County sheriff’s offices, Poarch Tribal Police and the Bay Minette, Flomaton and Brewton police departments.

RELATED: State Rep. Brett Easterbrook arrested on prostitution, human trafficking charges in Escambia County

Undercover officers posted online ads posing as escorts, some presenting as underage, and arrested the men who showed up at an Atmore hotel.

Seven of the 17 were initially charged with first-degree human trafficking – the rest with soliciting prostitution.

Marshall spoke to the latest on “The Rightside” hosted by Allison Sinclair and Amie Beth Shaver, in partnership with Yellowhammer News on Thursday morning.

“I think it’s part of a broader operation that was conducted by multiple law enforcement agencies down there. Sheriff Jackson does a wonderful job in Escambia County, and frankly, has had this as something he wanted to work on,” Marshall said.

“Our interstate highways become vehicles for which traffic can take place. We look at I-65, obviously, going through Escambia County there. I think this was a priority for that community to try to find those that were engaging in this illicit behavior.”

“We’ve seen these actions across the state. I remember Shelby County not too long ago engaged in one of these efforts where we have law enforcement that are trained to know how to get online and to be able to provide opportunities for those that want to prey on women and kids an opportunity to be charged, and this is I think a reflection of that.”

Among those arrested were State Rep. Brett Easterbrook (R-Fruitdale), Satsuma City School Board President Kory Wesley and Orange Beach Public Works Director Timothy Tucker.

On Monday, Prosecutors moved to reduce the first-degree trafficking charges against Easterbrook and Wesley to attempted human trafficking because the sting involved no actual victim, lowering the charge from a Class A felony, which carries up to life in prison, to a Class B felony.

Court filings allege both men offered money for sex with an undercover officer they believed to be under 19. Tucker faces only a misdemeanor prostitution charge.

“I do believe that the charge on the representative now has been amended to be attempted human trafficking, which I think is a reflection – without getting into the details of what took place in the investigation – shows that this was a sting operation using undercover law enforcement to be able to help entice others coming in,” Marshall said.

“The reason why this is human trafficking versus just a solicitation of prostitution is going to be based on the age the undercover represented themselves, and so I think that’s the facts that will ultimately come out more than likely in a preliminary hearing that I would expect to take place here in the next several months.”

“Look, it’s reprehensible when you see public officials doing this, but particularly with this charge, and again, let’s acknowledge that nobody has been convicted yet, and the process has to lay out. But at least the circumstance of the charge indicate this was not a solicitation of an adult, but in fact involved somebody that would have been, for Alabama law, under the age of 19.”

Sinclair raised a frequent complaint about similar operations: Those arrested end up with misdemeanors and walk.

Marshall said that is the law, not a failure of the sting.

“Soliciting prostitution is just a misdemeanor itself. It’s the human trafficking charge which gets it elevated, and so I think what I saw of those that were charged in this operation in Escambia County, most of those were going to be of the misdemeanor variety, and it doesn’t mean that they’re not charging what they can charge. It’s just simply that’s the charge itself that was involved,” he said. “Now the attempted human trafficking for the state representative is obviously a different animal, and it still would fall in the felony ranks.”

Marshall said the training officers receive is what keeps those cases from collapsing under an entrapment defense.

He credited Covenant Rescue Group, the Alabama nonprofit led by former Navy SEAL Jared Hudson that trains law enforcement on undercover operations.

“There’s a very specific protocol, and principally, online is where the engagement between undercover law enforcement and offenders are taking place. They have to really make sure that they follow very specific guidelines to ensure that the initiation of this is coming from the offender, and that we’re not using law enforcement in a way that the offenders have a defense,” Marshall said.

“I do think they’ll be held accountable.”

Marshall’s intentional posture toward the issue dates to his time as Marshall County district attorney, where he prosecuted a youth soccer coach for child sexual abuse and trafficking.

“He’s now in jail the rest of his life,” Marshall said. “It was very much a learning experience for me about the issue of human trafficking, frankly the difficulty that you have in prosecuting those cases, and when I became AG, we want to do things to help not only facilitate local communities understanding the issue, but how it is that we can do it more effectively. And so we’ve tried to be a little bit of a clearinghouse from the AG’s office.”

The sting in Atmore, he said, is the easy version. The hard cases are the ones with real victims.

“Let’s take it outside of the context here, where it looks like a sting operation, where it’s going to be law enforcement and documents and records that are going to be used to prosecute. But when you have larger human trafficking operations, one of the stranger aspects of these cases is that many times those women that are truly the victims on both sides, both the pimps that are holding them out and the individuals that are soliciting sex from them, don’t want to view themselves as victims,” Marshall said.

“They actually feel an affinity for those who ultimately are engaging in coercive activity against them, and they are very suspicious of law enforcement and others.”

“Let’s use the illicit massage parlor setting. What we find is that when we’re able to identify those operations, once we’re able to pull those victims out of those circumstances, many times they’ll leave within a very short period of time, and so you’re ultimately left as law enforcement and prosecutors without your key witnesses being able to help your case moving forward.”

Marshall pointed to The WellHouse, the St. Clair County shelter for trafficking survivors, as the kind of partner that keeps witnesses in place. “It’s why when you don’t have those resources available, it becomes very difficult to be able to hold offenders accountable,” he said.

No court dates have been announced for Easterbrook or Wesley. Atmore police said three of the 17 arrested were in the country illegally.

Grayson Everett is the editor in chief of Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on X @Grayson270.