They hunt from their computers, their phones, and their gaming devices. They lure via text message, video games, or chatrooms. They are neighbors, teachers, and fathers.
Child porn predators are using high tech tools to lure their victims, and the elite internet crimes against children or ICAC unit at LAPD is on the front-line of the fight to keep kids safe.
When LAPD ICAC first formed in Lo More..s Angeles in 2004, it was made up of just a few officers and nabbed just one offender. Four years later with a larger staff, committed detectives, and a captain who fights for funding at the helm, ICAC has put nearly 200 suspects in handcuffs for creating or exchanging child porn.
"Some of these kids are being brutally raped, brutally tortured," said Capt. Fabian Lizarraga. "We have some cases involving babies." Lizarraga said detectves work tips they gather from the national cyber tip hotline, and from detective work in chatrooms, message boards, and websites.
Over the past years, Lizarraga said the technology has grown from computers to mobile phones to gaming devices. "The Xbox 360…you can get online and now you can not only battle with someone across the country, you can talk with them and predators know this," said Lizaranga who warned that the "gaming conversations" often lay the ground work for predators to establish a relationship with their victims before they attack.
Lizarraga also warns of posting "innocent" pictures on social networking websites. "They will take that picture and remove it and post it to another picture on somebody that's not fully clothed." It's called morphed child porn. It's still a crime. It's still pornography, and detectives will count it among their finds as they mine hard drives, external drives, and thumb drives for evidence of a crime.
Once a tip is handed over to detectives, they try to make contact with the suspect. They attempt to start a conversation online, via text messages, or through social networking sites. Once there is evidence that child porn is being produced, exchanged, or sold detectives move in to seize the suspect's computer and dig through the hard drive for evidence.
The small staff of about eight at Lad’s ICAC often work 10-15 cases each. Only a few are trained to complete the forensic search of computer's seized. Each are committed to stopping suspects before those suspects find victims. "This is not innocent. This is not victimless. This is the documentation of a horrific sexual abuse of children. Anything we can do to intercede and end that, you find all of us in here are very motivated."
