MEMPHIS, TN - (WMC-TV) - New high-tech tools are helping Mid-South investigators catch child porn suspects in the act of sharing. Only 60 task forces use technology like it across the country.
The Memphis Police Department has a handful of investigators who do nothing but fight child porn on the Internet. They say new tactics are getting results.
Lt. Wilton Cleveland manages MPD's Internet Crimes Against Children task force, which is a group of investigators who have been busy.
"We have made a lot of arrests lately," said Wilton.
Ten suspects were caught in September, and more arrests are in the works. William Keltner, Alejandro Barrios, and Luis Hernandez are accused of having and sharing child porn.
Court records indicate these men shared child porn with the police without realizing it through a file sharing program.
Cleveland declined to get specific.
"These cases have made themselves available using certain tools that we've been able to hone in on the guys that we've been looking for," said Cleveland.
Some of the child victims and their fates are known, but some are unknown.
"These children are being abused, basically, over and over again every time somebody views an image and every time somebody views a video," said Cleveland.
Cleveland says national averages show the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force program has a lot of work left to do.
"Statistically, we're only arresting one percent of the guys out there that are downloading, viewing, and producing child pornography. So it's a bigger problem than sometimes we want to admit," he said. "We're going to continue to go after these guys until hopefully we get them all."
Cleveland says they share information with task forces across the country the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to try to ID and find the children who are not known. ..Source.. by Nick Kenney
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