There’s no question that investigators from the La Vista Police Department’s Internet crimes against children unit are “kewl.”
They know all the text messaging lingo such as LOL and L8R, they love the Jonas Brothers, and they could tell you everything about “Twilight.”
After all, they are 13- and 14-year-olds who like meeting new people online in chat rooms and on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook.
At least, that’s what they want sexual predators to think.
The truth is, they’re grown men. They slip into the guise of preteens and head online to look for sexual predators.
They don’t put on high heels, lip gloss and dresses to get in the mind-set of a young girl. They simply go to what La Vista Police Chief Bob Lausten calls “Hannah Montana School.”
“This isn’t something any cop can do,” Lausten said. “You have to be able to walk the walk and talk the talk and have a persona of a teenager.”
Lausten said the majority of investigators who go undercover online have children of their own and know what a teenager might say or do.
“They have to know pop culture,” he said. “If they are not hip to the culture of a 13- or 14-year-old, the investigation can get away from them.”
In Hannah Montana School, investigators get up to speed on what’s hot and what’s not for a teen — everything from the lingo to new trends.
It’s all part of their gig to go undercover online and find sexual predators.
In one of the unit’s first online investigations in September 2004, an undercover police officer portrayed himself as a petite 14-year-old girl with long brown hair. He typed words like “kewl” and “thnx” to fit the character in a chat with a 27-year-old man from Omaha. It took less than three minutes before the man brought up sex.
A recent crime drop in La Vista has freed up investigators to put more focus on online investigations. In the past few weeks, the La Vista force has made six arrests, including that of an Omaha police officer, Lausten said.
“If we did this around the clock, there’s no telling what we could do.”
Lausten said investigators get together each month to discuss a variety of topics, including online crimes and investigations. New investigators are trained about once a year.
Starting Tuesday, La Vista investigators will meet in Lincoln with other online investigators from across the region to share information. Lausten said they will meet as often as needed.
La Vista landed the Internet crimes against children unit because the city had a new police station, which opened in 2003, and had the space to become a central location for Sarpy County law enforcement agencies.
La Vista received start-up funds for equipment and training from the Nebraska State Patrol in September 2004.
Papillion police officers sometimes use La Vista’s lab, which is equipped with several State Patrol computers, to conduct their online investigations. Investigators from Bellevue and Sarpy County have also used it.
La Vista has six trained online investigators, including Brad Wood, who is the only certified electronic device forensic examiner in Sarpy County.
Wood said he’s surprised at how many sexual predators online don’t recognize the risk they are taking.
“Basically, an electronic device is DNA,” he said. “They are leaving digital fingerprints.”
He said that often, when potential sexual predators are arrested and their computers are taken for evidence, child pornography also is found.
That’s what happened when La Vista police arrested a 36-year-old Papillion man this month on suspicion of soliciting sex from someone he believed was a preteen. The man faces 20 counts of possessing child pornography, two counts of online enticement and one count of third-degree sexual assault of a minor.
Said Lausten, “It’s a sense of accomplishment when you can take someone who tries to exploit a child off the streets.”
Contact the writer:
444-1336, leia.mendoza@owh.com
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