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Task force to target online predators
Guilford County Sheriff's Office one of 23 agencies to get grant from federal government
Guilford County Sheriff BJ Barnes said the program is about going after people who go after children.
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Published: November 25, 2008
Updated: 11/25/2008 12:05 am
GREENSBORO - Local and federal authorities announced the creation of a regional task force and new public-service announcements yesterday to combat sexual exploitation and crimes against children over the Internet.
The Guilford County Sheriff's Office has received $475,960 to establish the task force. The money comes from a community-oriented policing grant through the U.S. Department of Justice.
The sheriff's office was one of 23 agencies in the nation to receive a grant. The Child Sexual Predator Program is designed to pay for programs for law-enforcement agencies to find, arrest and prosecute child-sexual predators and exploiters, and to enforce state sex-offender registration laws.
"We are going after the people who go after our children. That's what this program is all about," Sheriff BJ Barnes of Guilford County said at a news conference.
Barnes' office is working with the U.S. Attorney's Office and six local sheriffs, including Forsyth, Davidson and Rockingham counties. The task force will cover 3,412 square miles and 1.32 million people.
The money will pay for laptop computers, software and training for deputies to learn how to track online predators. It also will provide a full-time salary for a deputy who will pursue the predators.
U.S. Attorney Anna Mills Wagoner said that the grant is needed. It is part of the Justice Department's Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative designed to protect children from abuse online.
"What we know can be frightening," Wagoner said. "There are people out there who want to exploit and harm children."
Barnes said that his office built 35 cases against offenders in the past two years. At the news conference, a deputy using a laptop computer chatted with a man whom investigators consider an online child predator.
Barnes pointed to a sting operation in 2006 that led to the arrests of 10 people who traveled to Guilford County to have sex with a person they believed was a child. Of those defendants, nine were convicted, and one case is pending.
Until now, many sheriffs' offices did not have the resources to pursue predator investigations.
"To make a good case, you have to spend a little time at it," Barnes said. "That could be at 2 a.m. We are going to be there when the bad guys are there."
Because the Internet has users worldwide, investigators will not "waste their time" pursuing cases against people who live outside the United States, Barnes said.
But the Justice Department will notify law-enforcement agencies in countries where people are trying to exploit children online, Wagoner said.
The Justice Department also released four public-service announcements to educate parents about the dangers that their children face online and warns potential online predators that exploiting children online is a federal offense. Downloading sexual images of children is illegal, Wagoner said.
The Justice Department also uses Spanish-language ads with the same messages.
■ John Hinton can be reached at 727-7299 or at jhinton@wsjournal.com.
■ To see the public-service announcements, visit www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
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