Counties get grants to go after pedophiles on the Internet

"The Internet is the future of police work."  -- Michael J. Brown, Sheriff, Bedford County, Virginia

By Kevin Wilcox, Senior Staff Writer

    The Internet can connect children to the world's finest art, music and scientific research.  It can also connect them to the world's most repulsive criminals.

    "The Internet is the future of police work," said Michael Brown, sheriff of Bedford County, Va., which just got a $199,879 grant from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to step up efforts to stop child pornographers.  "When the criminals were on horses, we were on horses.  When they went to cars, we went to cars.  Now they're in cyberspace and we have to be in cyberspace."

    Brown said Bedford County, with a population of less than 46,000, has been working part-time on Internet crimes against children for about four months.  In that time they've made seven arrests and confiscated about 20,000 sexually explicit images of children.  This grant will help the county pursue the 60 cases that re now on the back burner.

    "With this grant, watch out," Brown said.  "We have a war to win.  I think this problem is much worse than the federal government acknowledges.  It is wide and it is deep.  Decent people cannot imagine what child pornography is."

    "Since the advent of the Internet, sexual predators no longer need to lurk in parks and malls." said Shay Bilchik, administrator of DOJ's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.  "Instead, they can roam freely from chat room to chat room, looking for susceptible children."

    This isn't news to Sgt. Mike Tsuchida of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department.  Their grant will go to strengthen the Sacramento Valley Hi-Tech Crimes Task Force.

    "We get 25 call a year," Tsuchida said, "and it's increasing.  The more you look, the more you find.  Based on my 23 years in law enforcement, the exploitation of children seems to be increasing.  I don't know what we're going to do to stem the tide."

    The grants are designed to encourage regional, multi-jurisdictional, multi-agency responses to Internet crime.  The funds will go to help train detectives in computer technology and build proactive prevention programs.

    "What we're hoping to do is put together a GIS mapping system in south Florida," said Mary Ann Callahan, the research and development coordinator at the Broward County Sheriff's Office.  "Currently there is crime mapping done, but it's not shared.  We want to know where our victims are in relation to our offenders."

    In Broward the money will go to expand the efforts of the LEACH (law enforcement against child harm) Task Force, established in 1995.  Offices will be established in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, with efforts and cooperation extending to five others.

    "There was a need to bring detectives into a more formal atmosphere, increase training and add ways to track cases," Callahan said.

    Training will be  a big part of the program in Sacramento County, as well, Tsuchida said.

    "You have agencies all over the place that are finding it's difficult to keep up with high tech.  Examining a seized computer alone can take 20 hours," Tsuchida said.  "You can't go into court and say, 'we took this computer from a parolee and we found child porn on it.'  You have to document everything."

    "Even writing these search warrants is a whole new arena," he added.  "It has to be seized properly.  You can't just unplug it.  What if the evidence is on the screen when you go in?  We've had that before."

    The expertise in this area is so rare there are only three law enforcement agencies in the state of Virginia that have a computer forensics specialist, Brown said.

    "Just like a medical examiner in a homicide case does an autopsy, the computer forensic examiner takes a computer apart and does an autopsy," Brown said.  "A lot of these people don't realize that when they erase a file, it's still there somewhere."

    The grants recognize the strong track records of the county departments in this new area of criminal investigation.  The Sacramento program has attracted the attention of state officials, as well.  They're considering using the program as a model for several other regional units in the state.

    "I'm told that one of the reasons we got this grant was that we have a good track record in the past 32 months," Tsuchida said.  "I believe there will always be predators out there.  I love my job and going after people like that.  And I'm proud that we've been given this opportunity."

    They're eager to get started in Broward County, too.  The county will hire a research specialist to create the database to be shared by the counties.  The rest of the money will go to training, equipment and education.

    "I'm excited about the grant," Callahan said.  "I can hardly wait for them to get up and get going."

    (For more information about Broward County, Fla., call Mary Ann Callahan, 954/321-4823; Sacramento County, Calif., contact Sgt. Mike Tsuchida, 916/874-3002; and in Bedford County, Va., call Sheriff Michael Brown at 540/586-4800.)