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U.S. ‘asleep at the wheel’ on child porn
whoiscarol | October 8, 2009 at 06:24 am
Officials say images of younger children becoming more pervasive
BARTOW, Fla. – When a single Florida county arrested 45 men and boys from all walks of life last June on charges of downloading child pornography, some people worried the place had become a haven for deviants.
But top law enforcement officials and child welfare experts say the only thing unusual about Polk County is that its sheriff, Grady Judd, happens to pursue child-porn enthusiasts with more fervor and resources than most.
Child porn has grown so pervasive on the Internet, they say, that police agencies all over the country, using the latest file-tracking technology, could easily spend every day finding and arresting offenders
“Today, it’s truly like shooting fish in a barrel,” said Judd, who has directed four child pornography roundups since 2006, resulting in at least 176 arrests in Polk County, a patchwork of orange groves, phosphate mines, modest towns and a half-million people between Tampa and Orlando. The biggest city is Lakeland, population 90,000.
Mike Phillips, chief of the computer crimes section at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said Polk’s sheer number of child pornography arrests in recent years is almost unheard of nationally for a single agency.
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