SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) –
More children are being targeted online by predators and authorities say they’re doing all they can to stop them.
“We don’t know who’s out there. Someone could say it’s a 12-year-old doing something. In reality it can be somebody completely different,” said Jessica Marquez.
She says she limits the amount of time her children are online.
“We restrict it. Maybe an hour, two hours a day, sporadically. Other than that we don’t really let them have access to that. We don’t have it on the T.V.s at home. It’s only on our phones. No iPad. No T.V.s. None of that,” she said.
Southwest Missouri Cyber Crimes Task Force detective, Chris Corbett says there’s a 30 percent increase in reports filed with his agency since last year.
“You wouldn’t take your kid to another city and just let them out and roam by themselves. Here we are giving them access the world and to a bunch of predators,” he said.
He, along with a handful of investigators trained by the FBI among other agencies, track internet crimes across 22 counties, including the Ozarks. He wouldn’t give away all of the agency’s secrets on how they go after suspected predators but did share some tactics.
“There’s a lot of legal paperwork put into place like investigative subpoenas, search warrants to the electronic service providers, to get us more information. Usually that gets us to a house. It gets us to a specific location. From there we determine who the perportator is,” he explained.
Corbett says based on what he’s seen, lurking online, he expects the number of cases to increase.
“Anywhere that children are online there’s going to be predators. Right behind the predators is going to be our task force trying to get them,” he said.
It’s that promise Jessica says, makes her feel safe.
“In reality there’s just too much out there. Too much accessible for children. Even though they say there are regulations, like YouTube Kids. That’s what I use. But even though there are regulations there, I know that there are somethings that slip through the cracks in different things they use so knowing that someone is out there watching and trying to put a stop to this is great,” she said.
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