Derek Marsh, MA, MPA

Derek Marsh retired from the Westminster Police Department, CA, in 2013, as Deputy Chief after more than 26 years of service. His law enforcement career was spent at WPD. During that time, he held various assignments. As an officer, he worked in patrol, DARE, hostage negotiations and our business Mall. While a sergeant, he worked patrol and as the Chief’s Adjunct (during which he handled administrative, technology, and miscellaneous assignments). As a lieutenant/commander, he worked in patrol, detectives, and administration. As an acting deputy chief, he was responsible for supervising WPD operations, investigations, and administrative activities. After retirement, Derek returned as an interim deputy chief and continued his duties for an additional ten months. He then worked with a consulting firm and supervised the City’s technology systems for a little more than a year.

In 2004, he co-founded the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force (OCHTTF). Derek served as the co-chair of the OCHTTF from 2004-12, during which time he developed and taught courses in human trafficking (HT) locally and across the state of California, supervised human trafficking investigations, assisted in creating anti-HT DVDs for state and federal grants, wrote and managed multiple HT grants, and provided Congressional testimony twice (2007 & 2009) as an expert witness. He has presented anti-HT outreach and trainings across California and the United States, Saipan, Italy, Argentina, Romania, Greece, Spain, Rwanda, and Kenya (the latter two with the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime).

Mr. Marsh was the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) Visiting Fellow in Human Trafficking from October of 2015 through December of 2018, researching how human trafficking task forces identify, investigate, and prosecute labor trafficking cases throughout the United States; as a secondary focus, he examined ECM Task Force collaborations and their dynamics. In addition, he helped to develop & provide training and technical assistance through the BJA Training and Technical Assistance Center (TTAC) and Office of Victims of Crimes (OVC) TTAC agencies. The overall goal of his fellowship was to identify labor trafficking promising practices in victim/case identification, investigations, and prosecutions and to assist in developing assessment and intervention methods to enhance collaborative partnerships in human trafficking task forces.

He works currently as the Associate Director of the Global Center for Women and Justice (GCWJ) at Vanguard University, Costa Mesa. At GCWJ, he works to prevent the exploitation of vulnerable and at-risk populations of women, children, and men via human trafficking and other local and transnational criminal enterprises. his work focuses on GCWJ’s online and in-person undergraduate Anti-Human Trafficking Certificate program, grant writing, and developing and providing local, national, and global outreach and training programs and educational opportunities for first responders and frontline workers. He published a peer reviewed article this year regarding collaboration and labor trafficking investigations.

Derek has an M.A. in Human Behavior, an M.P.A. in Police Management & Leadership.