"Police! Search Warrant!"
It started with a series of loud knocks on the door, followed by shouts.
Federal, state and local cops in Florida were not searching for drugs, guns or cash. Instead, they were looking for computers: hard drives loaded with child pornography.
During the first state-wide sweep dubbed "Operation Orange Tree," cops seized dozens of computers, and busted 77 men accused of downloading pornography featuring children.
The secret weapon to finding these guys was a new, high-tech software program recently made available to law enforcement.
"This is one of the greatest improvements in law enforcement technology in my 20 years in law enforcement," said Special Agent Mike Phillips of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE).
The new tool has taken the guesswork out of finding cyber criminals.
Although law enforcement agencies have declined to give the specifics of the software's methodology, they say it can help them zero-in on wireless routers and illegal files.
According to Agent Phillips, the FDLE has come a long way.
"It used to be people who collected child porn had a shoebox of images stuffed away in a closet. Now, that shoebox is on the Internet, ready to be shared with all the other child predators," he said. "We can now isolate that shoebox and trace it to an individual's house."
And, that's exactly what cops did, with a degree of success, during the eight-week operation. FDLE, with the support of the Florida Attorney General's Office, with their initial use of the new technology, set out to see how well it worked, and to get predators off the streets.
They called it "Operation Orange Tree," because oranges are one of Florida's natural resources, and so are children.
"We want our children to remain innocent," said Agent Phillips.
Producers from America's Most Wanted joined the manhunt in South Florida.
FDLE, with the United States Marshals' Florida Regional Fugitive Task Force -- consisting of investigators from the Florida Attorney General's Office, Broward County Sheriff's Office and the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office -- knocked on doors and seized dozens of laptops, desktops and unsuspecting men who they said had filled their computers with child porn.
At Large Fugitives:
Roshard Whitehead
Ricardo Lecky
Pierre Domville__
____________________
More of the story posted on AMW: http://www.amw.com/features/feature_story_detail.cfm?id=3473
No comments:
Post a Comment