By Joe Meyer
The Columbia Daily Tribune
As the Mid-Missouri Internet Crimes Task Force enters its third year, investigators said there is plenty of work to do as online predators come up with new ways of preying on children.
“It’s just going to get crazy,” task force Detective Tracy Perkins said. “Technology is going to eat us alive, but we’ll just have to combat it however we can.”
One of 10 Internet task forces in the state, the Mid-Missouri group serves seven Mid-Missouri counties and has partnerships with 20 area law enforcement agencies, Detective Andy Anderson said.
It started in January 2007 investigating online crimes against children and now employs three Boone County sheriff’s detectives as well as a University of Missouri police captain who works part time with the task force. A Columbia police detective is expected to rejoin the unit this year after completing a tour of duty in Kosovo.
In their offices south of Columbia, at 5551 S. Highway 63, task force detectives keep on each desk several computer monitors to use in conducting undercover online investigations. They also use the computers in their examinations of computer hardware seized with court-ordered search warrants.
Anderson has led the local effort in pursuing online predators, working Internet crimes since 1999. He has been investigating crimes against children for more than 20 years with the sheriff’s department. Anderson hopes additional state grant funding can lead to expansion of the task force.
Cases investigated by the task force have a broad reach, resulting in suspects arrested across Missouri as well as other states on state and federal charges. And earlier this month, felony charges were filed against a Missouri man serving as an Army reservist in Iraq. He is accused of exposing himself over the Web to a task force investigator posing online as a teenage girl.
“We are just touching the tip of the iceberg,” Anderson said. “We’re trying to catch up. Law enforcement on a whole is behind the curve.”
The task force investigated 120 cases in 2008, an 11 percent increase from the previous year. Investigators also made 24 arrests in 2008, a 26 percent increase, and forensic examinations of computers more than doubled to 109 from 52.
“I’m really proud of them,” Boone County Assistant Prosecutor Merilee Crockett said.
The bulk of the investigations last year dealt with child pornography on the Internet or the transmission of obscene and pornographic materials to children. Meanwhile, child enticement investigations decreased to 11 last year from 17 in 2007.
Media coverage of enticement cases - where a suspect is arrested after arriving at a location to meet someone he or she thinks is a child - have scared some potential suspects away, Anderson said. “Now even though they seem to be more leery on enticement, they seem more apt to flash themselves and expose themselves than they were before,” he said.
A recent change in state law gives detectives more incentive to investigate exposure cases. Displaying genitals on the Internet to someone younger than 15 or an undercover detective can result in a felony charge instead of a misdemeanor because of a state law passed last year, Crockett said.
Task force Detective Mark Sullivan said child predators might change their habits, but they will never quit entirely.
“I guess it’s quite similar to a person who’s on” methamphetamine, Sullivan said. “They know it’s wrong. They know it’s illegal. They know they shouldn’t do it, but that’s what they want.”
“The Internet’s a great thing,” Crockett added. “It’s also very dangerous.”
Copyright 2009 The Columbia Daily Tribune