Wisconsin AG warns against vigilantes setting up online child predator ‘stings’
Activist group says it cooperates with police
Wisconsin’s top cop made an unusual plea to state residents Monday: Don’t try to take the law into your own hands against suspected online child predators.
The founder of one Wisconsin group that confronts potential predators said he and his cohorts are not vigilantes and have cooperated with police.
In a news release, Attorney General Josh Kaul cited “a resurgence of civilians attempting to lure suspected online predators has occurred in Wisconsin.”
“Vigilante ‘sting’ operations are illegal, they put innocent bystanders in danger, and they can increase the chance that someone who has committed a crime will go free,” Kaul said in a news release.
“Law enforcement officers, in coordination with prosecutors, are best able to safely apprehend suspects and to ensure that someone who has committed a crime is successfully prosecuted.”
The warning comes after a June incident in Johnson Creek, in which members of World Wide Predator Hunters posed online as a young teen and lured someone to that city. What exactly happened was not explained in Kaul’s release. A spokesperson at the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office said the matter is under investigation.
The Predator Hunters group founder, Jay Pretty, 38, of Edgerton, said he thinks Kaul’s news release was a response to a Madison TV station’s recent report on the one-year anniversary of the group.
Pretty says his group is active in three states and is growing. He said he’s confronted about 50 men who thought they were meeting underage girls for sex around Wisconsin.
“We’re not vigilantes,” he said. “If you were a vigilante, you’d beat the hell out of these people and be done with it,” not turn over his chat logs and video to police.
Pretty says volunteers create decoy profiles in chat rooms and the predators initiate sexual talk. If it progresses far enough, they set up meetings at public places where volunteers with cameras confront the arriving men, like the former NBC show “To Catch a Predator.”
He said police try to persuade him to stop “for my own safety,” but that his group will never stop. None of his subjects has ever responded violently, he said.
The group has posted video of several confrontations on its YouTube channel. In at least one, in Minnesota, local police had a man under surveil
lance and arrested him after he drove off from questioning by the group’s volunteers.
In another, from Janesville in July, Pretty asks a man, “What was going through your head?”
When confronted with comments from a chat log, the man says he was only joking.
“That’s what all you predators say,” Pretty says. “I’m telling you, stay off them apps. If I catch you on them apps again, it’s going to be even worse.”
In the wake of the Johnson Creek incident in June, Jefferson County District Attorney Susan Happ stated that even well-intended citizens rarely conduct their investigations in a way that will lead to a successful prosecution, and, in fact, usually hamper or prevent prosecution.
Critical evidence might be destroyed by the suspect or compromised, or later suppressed by a judge because of procedural violations traceable to the vigilantes.
A confronted suspect could also turn violent.
Matt Joy, director of the state’s Internet Crimes Against Children task force, said his group has seen increased activity by the citizen groups or individuals over the past year, even though the popular NBC show stopped airing in 2015.
He estimated fewer than a dozen groups based in and outside Wisconsin have been active in luring suspected predators to Wisconsin. He said none of the incidents has resulted in criminal prosecutions.
“I would say it’s trending nationally,” Joy said. “Colleagues in other states describe this” kind of private investigations activity as well.
He stressed that the safer, better way for people to help stop online predators is to contact police as soon as they learn about suspicious activity.
“You never know how someone’s going to react” to being confronted, he said. “People who commit these crimes know they’re in very serious situations.”
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children operates a webbased tip line. Joy said that clearinghouse sent nearly 2,200 leads to the Wisconsin task force last year. The number of such referrals has grown every year, he said.