Policing the predators
If an Internet sex predator isn't talking to these cops, he's talking to your kids
Sitting in front of a computer screen, the lieutenant with the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force poses as a girl, replying to instant messages, careful to use misspellings and lingo common for a preteen child.
"This guy's asking if I'm alone now," McQuiston says. "He's already talked to me about phone sex."
The Utah attorney general's ICAC task force recently allowed a Deseret Morning News reporter and photographer to accompany officers on a Saturday night as they worked an overtime shift, serving warrants for suspected child pornography and speaking with sexual predators online.
The ICAC task force arrests more people per capita than anywhere else in the nation.
"There's a bunch of different ways to measure number one. But if you measure number one by per capita productivity, we're certainly number one," said Ken Wallentine, the chief of law enforcement for the Utah Attorney General's Office.
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"There's kids in the neighborhoods of Utah," Wallentine said. "A neighborhood chock full of kids is nirvana for a child predator."
The ICAC offices look like any other cubicle farm. Detectives have pictures of their wives and children tacked up next to computer monitors showing hard-core images and sexually explicit chats.
"We surf all chat rooms," McQuiston says. "AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, MySpace, everywhere."
A Web site address pops up in one of the chat rooms he logs into. It directs him to an innocent-looking site. However, authorities say they are called "porn bots," which can take over a computer and boot up a number of explicit sites or plant a computer virus.
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