Lorain County Commissioners on Oct. 25 approved a $449,615 grant agreement for the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office Human Trafficking Program, and one of the commissioners brought up the idea of ​​creating a Cleveland Missing subchapter.

The grant agreement is through the Ohio Department of Public Safety and will provide $437,058 for Human Trafficking Task Force salaries and $12,556 for supplies and other expenses, according to county documents.

Sheriff’s Capt. Richard Bosley was on hand at the commissioners’ meeting to explain the role of the task force, which includes three other counties in a program called HEAL that represents the Huron, Erie, Ashland and Lorain County sheriff’s offices.

“We’re trying to get people out of the trap of human trafficking, no matter what kind of trafficking it is,” Bosely said.

The purpose of the HEAL program is to identify and remove human trafficking victims from their abductors, he said.

Statistics show that many of the victims are arrested multiple times, and law enforcement never knows they are victims of a trafficking organization, Bosley said.

Part of the program will include working with incarcerated people to identify them as victims of trafficking schemes sooner rather than later, he said.

While the grant was awarded to the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office, the agency will manage it and allocate funds to the other three counties, Bosley also said.

Task force members have sought advice from professors at Bowling Green State University and other law enforcement agencies as they continue to build the HEAL program, he said.

Commission Vice Chairman Dave Moore floated an idea to start a sub-chapter of Cleveland Missing, a nonprofit organization that helps families whose family members are missing.

“I don’t want to create anything new,” Moore said. “They (Cleveland Missing) have a very good schedule.”

Moore said he would like to begin discussing the idea of ​​creating the subchapter in the next two to three months.

He said he recently attended a meeting where several families shared their experiences of finding their missing loved ones and how Cleveland Missing helped them in their time of need.

Elizabeth Smart, who has been missing for 10 years, was one of the speakers, as was a Huron County family whose family member was found dead and the accused killer is facing a murder charge in Court Huron County Common Pleas.

Moore recalled the event as “very moving” and “very moving”.

“It was a very emotional meeting,” he said.