Neighborhood Watch Enters Cyberspace: Fresno Co. Detective Warns of Criminals Lurking on the Web.
By Jim Guy, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Jan. 19–Neighborhood Watch is moving into the cyber age — at least if Kevin Wiens has anything to say about it.
Wiens is a Fresno County sheriff’s detective whose specialty is catching predators who use the Internet to prey on children.
Thursday evening, he told a Fresno County Neighborhood Watch meeting that the criminals lurking on the Web are as great a threat as the ones lurking outside the schoolyard.
“Get the computer out of your child’s bedroom and put it in the living room,” Wiens urged parents. He also stressed the importance of looking at the online profiles kids post on Internet sites such as MySpace and Yahoo. And don’t let them post pictures because they are the “biggest thing that gets kids in trouble,” he said.
Wiens works with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement to fight child pornography that crosses state and international borders. He has prosecuted predators all over the country.
They are not hard to find. Wiens often enters cyber chat rooms where he assumes the identity of a child.
Aware that defense lawyers will argue their client was tricked into breaking the law, he poses as being not just young, but naive.
It doesn’t take long for a predator to cross the line and try to entice the child, he says. In a case two weeks ago, he met an Oakland man in cyberspace. Six hours later, the man was arrested when he drove to Fresno hoping to meet with a 13-year-old girl.
Bullying and stalking are just as real online, he said, cautioning parents to take note of sudden changes in their child’s behavior: becoming overly quiet or spending all of their time in their room. Stalkers can have a powerful weapon, Wiens says, because they might know everything about the child: address, school, parents and friends. In turn, the child is in the dark about the person who is pursuing them.
Asked if it were emotionally taxing to deal with the darker and more lurid side of the Internet, Wiens said putting cyber criminals behind bars where they can no longer endanger children makes it all worthwhile.
“That child is someone’s daughter,” he said of victims whose pictures circulate among child pornographers. “When [a picture] goes on the Net, it’s not coming off. The image is copied over and over again. Some people say they are just pictures. No, they are real victims.”
The reporter may be reached at jguy@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6339.
—–
Copyright (c) 2007, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
NASDAQ-NMS:YHOO,