Sheffield top cop says car washes and nail salons are among workplaces where modern slavery takes place

Detective Superintendent Nikki Leach is the force lead for modern slavery with South Yorkshire Police and has warned that it ‘happens without people recognising and realising that it’s happening around them in many different areas’.

She adds that it can affect people in ‘all walks of life’ and that in her experience, nail bars, car washes, brothels, cannabis farms, construction are among the workplaces where modern slavery can take place.

Det Supt Leach said the force’s key objective is to reduce the prevalence of modern slavery in ‘our communities in Sheffield,’ but says it can be a challenge to get those forced into the criminal practise to come to the realisation they are victims, and to engage.

"The key thing about modern slavery victims is that they often don’t see themselves as a victim. So when we come into contact with them they won’t realise that what is happening is either modern slavery or trafficking. They think their lot is pretty poor but they don’t understand that it’s actually a crime and it’s actually exploitation,” said Det Supt Leach, who is also in the Sheffield command team.

"Victims of modern slavery have suffered trauma, they’re mistrustful of authority. They don't often wish to engage, either with the investigation or a prosecution and you know we do have a challenge in relation to driving forward investigations on an evidence-led basis without the victim and to achieve that threshold that's required and so that is a challenge that we’re working hard to to overcome.”

"And as we’ve seen with CSE (child sexual exploitation) historically it can often take 10, 15, 20 years before someone’s ready to accept they were a victim and dealt with the trauma of what’s happened to them to be able to deal with law enforcement officers.”

Police officers are trained to spot the signs of modern slavery, but Det Supt said it is also important for members of the public to also understand what to look out for.

“This is dependent on the situation in which someone finds themselves so if for example you use a car wash and you see that there is one person that's directing all the activity and a number of people that don't speak any English at all, that doesn’t appear to have the proper equipment [that would be a sign].

“In a car wash you expect people to have wellies, potentially gloves warm clothing to make sure that they're not getting soaking wet feet and sort of stood there having to clean however many cars and you know that kind of thing. That's kind of thing you could be looking for.”

“We'd be looking out for things like: is there a suspicion that people are sleeping on premises like car washes. Is there somewhere where and where you think people are sleeping because that is that that's an indicator in relation to that sort of exploitation in the car wash.

“In the nail bars often there might be somebody there that can't be can't speak any English whatsoever, doesn’t really want to engage with you. It might be that there appears to be someone in control of what they're doing in a different way to what you would normally expect that management or the boss of it that the company to do.