by David Ball
Staff Writer
Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum said the most dangerous letters that can show up on a child’s computer monitor today are LMIRL.
The letters are Internet shorthand for the phrase “lets meet in real life,” and they are often typed by online predators hoping to solicit a sexual encounter with a child.
In an attempt to prevent such meetings and aggressively prosecute those who pursue them, McCollum was in Jacksonville Thursday to officially open the expanded state Child Predator Cyber-Crime Unit that will oversee six new cyber-crime operations in Florida.
The growth is being funded by $2.3 million from the state legislature that will increase staff from six to 14 in the Jacksonville headquarters and add 50 more personnel at offices in Orlando, Tampa, Ft. Myers, Tallahassee, Tampa and Pensacola.
“I feel we’ll have the largest and most successful program in the country when this is all finished,” said McCollum. “This expansion has happened because of the dramatic increase in this kind of crime.”
McCollum’s office estimates that more than 77 million children use the Internet every day, with one in seven between the ages of 10 and 17 being sexually solicited while online. Florida reportedly ranks fourth in the nation for volume of child pornography.
The expansion of the cyber-crime unit comes on the heels of a new state law, the Cybercrimes Against Children Act of 2007, that went into effect Monday. The bill increases penalties for some types of cyber-crime and creates a new criminal charge against people who travel to meet a child after conversing with them online.
The law also includes new penalties for “grooming,” where a person lies about his or her age to entice a child into communication and eventually a meeting. Florida is currently the only state in the nation with such a law.
Cybercrime Unit Director Maureen Horkan said the law will help give her investigators and prosecutors more power to prevent sex crimes against children before they happen.
Horkan grew the Jacksonville operation after it began as a pilot program in 2005. The unit has produced close to 50 arrests, and Horkan said, and McCollum agreed, that Jacksonville is an ideal location for the new expanded headquarters.
“There is great support here with various law enforcement, FBI and our relationship with various prosecutors,” said Horkan. “I think we’ll be able to make a huge impact not only in Jacksonville, but in the state and the nation.”
At the unit’s offices in the Av-Med building on the Southbank, a team of investigators surf the Net for child pornography and pose as children online in order to solicit sexual encounters, similar to Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator” series.
In a live demonstration during McCollum’s visit, Law Enforcement Chief Chuck McMullen signed onto a chat room under the guise of a young child. Within minutes, four people had solicited him.
“What’s increasing is the level of sophistication with their soliciting,” said McMullen. “They are being a little bit more careful now.”
McMullen said the expanded program will help the core need of getting more investigators online, however, he doesn’t discount the need for education.
“You’re not going to arrest your way out of this problem,” he said.
On that end, the cyber-crime Unit has created an educational video program showing children the dangers of surfing the Internet and posting personal information on Web sites such as Myspace.com.
The video is already being played in schools across Florida, and plans are to have the video in every middle and high school by the end of this school year.
For more information on the Attorney General’s cyber-crime initiative, visit www.safeflorida.net/safesurf.