Vigilante justice rarely works to catch predators

3-26-2009 National:

NCAC speaker: Best to let law enforcers handle

It makes for great TV.

A sneaky guy knocks on the door of a suburban house, believing he's about to rendezvous with a 14-year-old girl he's been chatting with on the Internet, oblivious that hidden cameras and a television reporter await him.

He's caught on tape, making excuses, saying he wasn't really going to have sex with the girl. He just wanted to talk. Just wanted to be friends. Then he runs away. Or maybe he confesses.

And ratings go through the roof.

While the cyber vigilante group Perverted Justice partnership with "Dateline NBC's" "To Catch a Predator" drew attention to the issue of underage Internet users being lured by potential pedophiles, some child protection workers recommend against such collaborations.

Because good intentions can sometimes lead to bad outcomes, attendees at the National Children's Advocacy Center symposium on child abuse were discouraged from participating in sting operations instigated by the media or vigilante groups.

Bradley Russ, director of the Internet Crimes Against Children Training & Technical Assistance Program in New Hampshire, said Wednesday the job of catching sex predators belongs to law enforcement officers who understand what it takes to build a prosecution-worthy case.

Much more often than not, vigilante-run stings do not end in convictions.

"There's definitely a public safety concern," Russ said at the symposium at the Von Braun Center. "As with anything, you can take it to the extreme. It can hurt what you're trying to accomplish."

As "ridiculously stupid" as the men are who solicit sex online with juveniles, Russ said they often go free because the media or Internet watchdogs aren't properly trained to collect evidence. Frequently, he said, the chats are actually illegal entrapments.

"They have the mindset of 'it doesn't matter how we get 'em, let's just get 'em,' " Russ said.

An NBC affiliate in Pennsylvania did its own sting operation in March 2004, and it aired footage of four men who came to a rented house after being solicited by an alleged 14-year-old girl. Neighbors became livid when they realized what was happening. Some complained that it was irresponsible of the station to entice pedophiles to their street, and others said children could've been hurt when the men sped away from the scene.

Just as it wouldn't be advisable to give a citizen $100 to buy drugs and then turn over the drugs to law enforcement with a request to arrest the seller, Russ said Internet predators can't be stopped that way, either.

He said television gets in that game for ratings, and often elected law enforcement officials are enticed to join in to please voters.

"Dateline" stopped its "To Catch a Predator" stings after an assistant district attorney in Collin County, Texas, shot himself in the head as an NBC film crew and Perverted Justice members came to his home. All other stings involved the man going to meet the supposed teen, but in this case, after discovering that the chatter's URL address was that of a prosecutor, "To Catch a Predator" insisted on going to the man's home.

Russ said the assistant DA, Bill Conradt Jr., had declined to go meet who he thought was a 13-year-old boy. But NBC reporter Chris Hansen wanted to get footage of Conradt being confronted, so the cameras rolled.

"It could've been handled so much better," Russ said. "The Murphy (Texas) police let a television reporter tell them how to do their jobs."

Pornography was found on the man's computer. His sister successfully sued NBC.

When Russ asked the seminar attendees if they thought such collaborations were a smart idea, no hands went up.

"Good," Russ said. "That's good." ..News Source.. by PATRICIA C. McCARTER