"Terrible job": Analyzing kid porn to find victims, offenders

About the Child Exploitation Unit of Toronto Police Department's Sex Crime Unit:

Their work is a daily sojourn to the underworld. Gillespie has a team of 10 men and six women who spend hours in front of their computers, extracting leads, writing warrants and sifting photos for clues. The payoff is the day they get to kick down a door and take the "bad guy" away. The mood is light and the humor often off-color to ease the horror.

On one wall is a "Star Trek" poster with investigators' faces substituted for the Starship Enterprise crew. But even that alludes to a dark fact of their work: All but one of the offenders they have arrested in the last four years was a hard-core Trekkie. (Los Angeles Times)

Comments

[joe bagofdonuts]

what a horrifying article.

and just now a star trek next generation theme song ringtone went off near my cube.

[BlackJack21]

Ugh.

What an awful job. It must take a special person to deal with that kinda stuff everyday. Kudos to them!

I wonder if they can find a communicator or physic in her area to find her. If they have pics of her face, I bet someone can.

[thinksdifferent]

Psychics and communicators won't do any good. Studies have shown that their so-called visions provide little to no help in an investigation. The money spent on a psychic would be better spent on overtime for the officers working the case.

My heart goes out to the officers in this story. If heaven does exist, these selfless individuals don't have to worry about getting in.

[badbadman]

"I wonder if they can find a communicator or physic in her area"

1) Go to www.Google.com
2) In the search box type in define:physic (no spaces)
3) Hit ENTER.
4) Laugh hysterically.

[tdot]

North Americans love child porn. Not looking at it, but reading about it, watching tv shows about it, etc., the more salacious details the better. Shows like Law & Order:SVU turn child abuse into entertainment and are extremely popular. As long as it's wrapped up in a 'moral' package, people will get off on every nasty detail and then feel proud of themselves when they say, 'that's disgusting'.

[Miss-Black]

Trekkies? Is that just the creepiest thing in the world or what? I'll never be able to think of a Sci Fi Fan convention as being an innocuous NerdCon again.

"North Americans love child porn."

You know, you could say the same thing about murder, rape, bulimia, or dog kicking and it would still be true. What are you? Anti-North American? Somehow, I'll manage to survive ecven though your criticism of my culture cuts me to the quick.

[Jaycatt]

I think a more appropriate phrase would be "North Americans love tragedy". Remember: if it bleeds, it leads! Notice how very few positive news stories make it into the nightly TV show? Well, except for the cute puppy story thrown in at the end, of course.

[mianne]

"Our top story today - Billions of people today safely commuted between their homes and places of business without incident! Authorities are unclear as to how so many plane crashes, earthquakes, pandemics, and gunmen were averted, but they are thanking their lucky stars."

I somehow doubt such reporting would be considered boring and pointless by North Americans alone.

[InAgony]

Put the sanitized faces of these children on milk cartons as missing children. Use ficticious missing data and maybe someone will give leads that will help rescue the children without putting them in more danger. My heart goe out to the police that are doing this work. Don't give up!

WTF? Aren't they worried that posting the girl's face will prompt the molester to kill her to get rid of the evidence? Seems kinda dumb.