Arrested for Possession of Child Porn

(News Today) - After a South Bay cyber-sweep, San Jose police have arrested 11 men and women suspected of downloading sexual images of children on to their computers, including a registered sex offender who reportedly has a Christmas tree in his house with wrapped toys underneath.

The six-week "Operation Peer Block" culminated late last week with 140 officers serving 15 search warrants resulting in the seizure of close to 70 computers. The suspects are charged with felony possession of child pornography and are expected to be arraigned over the next two weeks.

If convicted, some were charged with additional drug charges, they can face up to three years in prison. All but one were from San Jose, with one suspect from Santa Clara.

The suspects, who range in age 17 to 65, have no known connection to one another, according to police. Two other people were arrested on unrelated drug charges.

Police held a press conference Monday morning to generate possible leads to make more cases against the suspects, see if they can find the anonymous children in the graphic, violent images and to try to dampen the viral demand for the peer-to-peer sharing of the pornography.

Standing before a cork board of mug shots, Police Chief Rob Davis said his agency wanted to send a strong and clear message.

"If you choose to share child pornography and victimize our children in the Bay Area, we are going to come after you,'' Davis said. "If people think they can go behind closed doors....and engage in felonious activity in which they are sharing vicious, violent and demeaning photographs of children who are being exploited... we are going to come after you."

Then, paraphrasing an old law enforcement, Davis added as emphasis: "Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide."

The multi-agency operation was coordinated by the San Jose police-based Internet Crimes Against Children regional task force, which is federally funded with a $500,000 annual grant.

Police say they are hoping to secure further funding and technological resources for future operations.

"This is just the tip of the iceberg," said Sgt. Ronnie Lopez, a department spokesman. "If we had more funds and people to go after these criminals, we could make 7 to 10 cases every single day."

Detective Kendra Nunes said that the ICAC investigators used investigative technology to identify the suspects by searching for trading activity of the images online. Police were deliberately vague when asked specifically which tools they used to identify and track down the suspects to their homes.

ICAC used search warrants, served Thursday, to find evidence and arrest the suspects. Nunes noted that the number of images had not yet been determined and said investigators may take months to sort through the images.

Some of the images were long-traded images; others were new. Nunes appealed to the public to try to help them track down the victimized children and people who took the images.

Some of the suspects, Nunes said, made admissions. While police reported no evidence that the suspects were engaged in actually producing the images, they reported being disturbed for instance by what the found in the Aberhaven Court home of Roger Schultz, a registered sex offender.

Investigators also said they found two rooms in Schulz's home that were decorated for children's use. The suspect's wife told police, they said, that she was in the process of adopting children.

A woman who answered the door at Schultz's door Monday afternoon angrily refused to comment. The operation also netted a female suspect suspected of possession of child pornography.

Nunes said that law enforcement is divided about the gender break own of child pornography suspects: some saying that women are rare and others estimating that women make up a larger percentage of the trade in such images.

Davis ended the press conference by saying of the evidence gathered during the operation: "You look into the eyes of the children in these images and it turns your stomach."

Source : kompas

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