WI- Anatomy of a sting

1-19-2009 Wisconsin:

How law enforcement officers catch Internet predators

On Thursday, Racine Mayor Gary Becker joined hundreds of other suspected child predators who have been charged with attempted sexual assault of a child following an online sting operation by state agents.

For the past 10 years state agents with the Division of Criminal Investigation’s Wisconsin Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force have been posing as children online in an effort to lure and arrest pedophiles. They spend hours surfing the net, using profiles that identify them as teens.

Suspected child predators make contact with the agents, form relationships online that oftentimes lead to the arrangement of a meeting and the intent of having sex.

When the suspected predator shows up at the meeting place, agents arrest them.

Current records show that the DCI task force has arrested 574 suspected pedophiles between 1999 and 2008. However, the total number of arrests for 2008 is not yet complete.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Becker, he allegedly formed a relationship online with what he thought was a 14-year-old, eighth-grade girl. That girl was really Special Agent Eric Szatkowski.

The Journal Times interviewed Szatkowski in 1999, when the task force had just started. A reporter sat and watched him chat online with a potential predator while pretending to be a 13-year-old boy.

During the two-hour mid-day demonstration, four adults sent instant messages about sex to the agent posing as a boy.

At that time, Szatkowski said when he first started going online posing as a child, he was amazed with the number of adults online who seem interested in discussing sex with people they know to be

children.

But chatting about sex itself isn’t the crime.

A suspect must show up someplace, intending to meet and sexually entice a child, before authorities will charge him.

According to the 1999 story, state agents are careful to point out they follow all laws regarding entrapment. They don’t bring up the subject of meeting and they don’t bring up sex

immediately.

But the online stings and the legality of the charges prosecutors were using to charge suspects caught in them have been challenged.

Following dozens of arrests during the first two years of the task force, prosecutions were stalled, some charges were dismissed and other cases ended in probation sentences for the offenders. Defense attorneys here and elsewhere questioned the legality of attempted sexual assault of a child and child enticement charges through the state’s appellate courts.

In June of 2002 the state Supreme Court upheld the charging, allowing stalled cases to move forward and in some cases, dismissed charges to be reinstated.

Wisconsin Deputy Attorney General Raymond Taffora said the task force has really grown in recent years. When it was started, Szatkowski and his partner were working online for overtime. Now, Taffora said they have seven agents, six analysts and a program assistant assigned to the program. “It’s become more organized,” he said.

The task force also has 60 law enforcement agencies as local partners that work with them. It’s cooperation that is needed to keep up with what authorities believe is an increasing amount of crimes against children online.

“There is plenty of evidence that the amount of child pornography available and shared on the Internet is growing and is significant,” Taffora said. “We’re doing what we can. We’re going to keep at it.” ..News Source.. by Marci Laehr Tenuta, Journal Times