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cowboys still go about a portion of their business with ropes and horses.
• The Casey Tibbs South Dakota Rodeo Center deserves credit for recognizing that Fort Pierre is one of the best places in the country to celebrate rodeo. The annual Match of Champions and the new sculpture garden unveiled Saturday both give people who care about western culture one more reason to get off the interstate and make the short detour to Fort Pierre to learn what this community and its rodeo center can teach them about the cowboy way of life.
• It's a great way of developing what amounts to a largely untapped resource - the living history and traditions of the American West. It's a great sport in a great town, and this is a great way to promote it.
• ___
• Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, June 3, 2013
• Sex trafficking needs spotlight
• The use of task forces to fight methamphetamine and child pornography in South Dakota is being expanded to a war against sex traffickers.
• U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson announced last week that state, federal and local resources will be used by the task force because the problem of using force, fraud and coercion to make money though prostitution has risen to that serious of a level in South Dakota.
• It would seem like Johnson's portrayal that sex trafficking is a growing problem here would be on target. More cases have come through the court systems identifying people who have targeted underage girls and advertised them for prostitution. With more cases, the police have heard from more victims.
• Locally, authorities have gone after people paying for sex, too.
• Johnson says victims in sex trafficking are often young and vulnerable based on a history of abuse, drug addiction, homelessness and other factors. Prostitution is offered as a way out but ends up trapping them in a lifestyle.
• Certainly, prostitution isn't a new crime nor is the work of johns who put the prostitutes on the street. But it's time to stop the preying on victims, the abuse and the trapping of young females into a life of prostitution.
• We have to do more than say, "Isn't that sad," or to somehow dismiss it because we think the victims did something wrong to get themselves involved in the crime.
• That attitude as a society is as wrong as turning our backs completely on the victims.
• It might take more than a task force to really eliminate sex trafficking and prostitution, but a task force is a great way to start. It provides specific structure and organization between agencies that shows offenders that law enforcement is serious.

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