Police warn against vigilante operations
Video of alleged ‘Creep Catchers’ pedophile sting action goes viral
City police are discouraging vigilantism after a video of an alleged pedophile sting by a Saskatoon resident surfaced online.
“We certainly don’t recommend anybody do this sort of vigilante action,” Const. Bill Bergeron said. “We have investigative units that do this and these sorts of investigations.”
The video, shot outside a downtown hotel on Wednesday, captures a verbal exchange between a bearded man and a person whose face is never shown in frame. The meeting followed a series of texts between the man and a person posing as an underage girl.
“You’re how old and you’re picking up a 15-year-old girl?” the offframe person asks.
No charges have been laid, but the video has been viewed more than 250,000 times and shared on Facebook by more than 5,000 people. It has sparked debate about whether the self-appointed pedophile hunters are heroic or irresponsible.
The man who set up the encounter and posted the video is Chase Karnes, 21, of Saskatoon.
“I grew up rough and whatnot, so I wanted to make a change in the community and the world,” Karnes said. “To protect the children because the children are our future.”
Karnes said he’s working as part of a crew known as “Creep Catchers,” which has posted videos of people conducting similar vigilante missions in Canadian cities like Calgary and Toronto.
He said his strategy was to make up a fake persona of a teenage girl on the dating website Plenty of Fish and “just start talking.” He posted chat and message logs of the conversations alongside the video of the reported sting.
“Within three hours, I had over 150 people wanting to meet with (the fictional girl),” he said.
While Karnes has only posted one video, he said he wants to continue “creep catching” on a daily basis. He’s not working with police, but said he wants to help law enforcement.
“It’s all the proof,” he said. “What we do is we get all the proof and everything. We get pictures, videos of them, licence plates — all the proof we can get about them ... and then the cops have it all laid out for them to do the charging.
“They (police) can just go on my Facebook (page), find all the stuff and go get the guy.”
A local company that occasionally employed the man in the video released a statement to the media on Friday.
“It has come to our attention that an individual that we engage on a casual basis ... has been implicated in the alleged solicitation of a minor,” the statement read. “We have terminated our relationship with this individual.”
Dawson Raymond of Calgary trained Karnes in the technique. Raymond said he has been working to establish “Creep Catchers” chapters across Canada, including Edmonton and Grand Prairie, Alta.
His approach is better than a sex offender registry or public service announcement when it comes to raising awareness of specific people with tendencies towards pedophilia, he said, adding he’s received messages of thanks from wives, kids and families of the people he has identified.
“When these guys do end up behind bars, it’s for f--king two months, man, if that. They get slapped on the wrist,” Raymond said. “It’s a joke, man, and what we’re doing, it works better as far as I’m concerned. S--t, they’re getting pushed right out of society.
“Everybody knows who these guys are. When I post a video, it goes viral in f--kin’ an hour.”
He hopes the videos help to influence systematic change, prompting dating sites to verify their clients’ ages with government ID, while serving as a deterrent for potential criminals in the future.
“I’m here. I’ve got guys on everywhere, on every chat site,” Raymond said. “Any one of these f--kers that try this, at least in the areas that I’ve got covered, you’re never going to get one again — it’s going to be us.”
Bergeron said police are aware of the video and are in the early stages of investigating, but they do not recommend such vigilantism. People should contact police if they have information about this type of activity, he said.
“You don’t know who you’re approaching. You don’t know anything about this, so we don’t recommend that people do this.”
Brian Pfefferle, a defence lawyer in Saskatoon, said police are better suited to undertake these investigations because they’re trained in the law and investigative work. However, from what he’s seen posted on Karnes’s Facebook page, it appears the 21-year-old didn’t break any laws, he said.
“This fellow seemed to be acting quite reasonably in the sense that he just went up to him, asked him if he was there and essentially appears to be gathering evidence and then lets the guy drive off without getting in his way or committing any other criminal offences,” he said.
“It’s not a criminal offence to investigate crimes on your own.”
Pfefferle said it’s important that due process is followed and the videos are turned over to the proper authority, adding this type of vigilante justice can set a dangerous precedent.
“If the idea is truly to protect children and to truly make our society more safe and just, we need to use the justice system that’s been set up for that exact purpose,” he said.
Vigilante investigations create complications for the courts, since the Charter of Rights and Freedoms may apply differently to a law enforcement officer than to a member of the public, he added.
Simon Stern, co-director of the Centre for Innovation Law and Policy at the University of Toronto, noted citizens can operate more freely than police, but it’s impossible to predict whether such stings will become more common.
“Most would agree that (police) couldn’t actually set up the meet and videotape the encounter unless they already had a good reason for targeting that particular individual,” he said.
“Whereas if a person who is not a police officer does it and then makes it available to the police, that’s generally thought to be more readily available for the police to use.”
We have investigative units that do this and these sorts of investigations. CON ST. BILL BERGERON