My takeaway is that there’s no secret document exposing how ICAC does its job, just waiting to be discovered.

The answers instead are out in the open, and we (and journalists like Steven Yoder, and CAGE) are just trying to get more people to care.

For sure it wasn’t CIA— they have better things to do than domestic sex stings.

It is a cruel joke when, in many cases, the more horrific the actual abuse is, the less time one gets. I know someone in prison for 12 years. He violated his teaching oath and had sex with a 17 year old. Another was 65 chatting with someone whom he thought reasonably was 24. After months of this, she typed 14 instead of 24. He questioned it. She assured him it was a clerical error. He got 33+ years. On appeal, VA said the prosecutor had a right to call a professional witness to attest that he had a propensity to desire children, but he was not allowed to refute that with his own professional witness. Justice in Action! In another case in North Dakota, a father rapes his three young daughters multiple times, gets 2.5 years.

Jacob

Having worked in law enforcement myself in the past, Not every officer, or Ranking officer follows the book/rules/protocol. Many a time did I experience situations that were so far out of protocol that I thought I was watching a movie in real life. If you have a lead detective on a sting and 4 to 5 other officers, one of them may “Improvise” which basically means entrapment.

My biggest thing is, if you go knowingly to meet an underaged kid, you knew what you were doing. But when on the computer when an agent pretends to be a kid and the adult logs off, doesn’t leave the house and think “Whew, that was a close one” then cops bust through the door and arrest them, do we live in Russia?

One thing I can look back on in my law enforcement career was, there was no internet, well at least not as we know it. I was still using a typewriter to write my reports back then if that tells you anything. The police cars we had then are probably classics by now.

Jacob,

While it is true ICAC is authorized under federal statute and is “out” (i.e., ‘not secret) they sure do act as secretly as they can. They avoid mentioning their name as often as they can. Under questioning by me, they hestitate to acknowledge their existence as a force, until I told them I knew they existed, and more. They also are rarely ascribed in news stories as “ICAC” when police spokesmen are asked for comment. If ICAC itself wanted its name mentioned, they would surely do so.

Three years ago or so, they did a huge trafficking sting in the Virginia Beach, VA area. But it was led by the US Marshals, not ICAC. Why? ICAC deals only with officers-as-fictitious-kids trolling online, though they love to conflate their zero-real-children-saved stats with the actual horrifying numbers of real children sex-trafficked (an actual problem) as if these two are the same. Conflating numbers is a common tactic among the disingenuous.

In short, cops know how to get the message out if they need to. They happily release glitzy advertisements about the “noble” police officer frequently enough when they are putting a high-gloss on their reputations before the communities they “serve.”

And, after all, why should they? They do not want scrutiny of their actions, which are opaque enough. They are also unusual in that they are a multi-agency, mulit-government-level consortium of law enforcement, which creates confusion on the part of the public.

It depends on the judge you get. When I worked in law enforcement, Powdered coke (Cocaine) was all the rage. The undercover agents were using flower, sugar or whatever looked like coke. All arrested either took a plea or were found guilty. One though that I remember, hired a high profile attorney who argued that if they were actually buying flour, that was not illegal and that they would introduce that to the jury.
The charges were dropped. But again, that was a judge who actually had a brain that was not swayed by falsehoods. Now do I believe all those arrested thought they were buying sugar or flour? No. The fact is the cops can lie and it is ok just to make an arrest.
After that many departments started using the real thing, signing out product from the evidence room from cases that had already been resolved (Otherwise it would have compromised that case the drugs belonged to.)
I saw so many things go on during my time in law enforcement I should write a book about it, but with my reputation tarnished by my own past, I would be considered unbelievable. Alas I still have the stories in my head, sometimes they keep me awake at night.

The fact is, there are good and bad people in every walk of life. Not all cops are bad. I once got pulled over for speeding. Since I was on the registry I just knew I was going to get a ticket. I remained calm and asked the deputy how his night was going and handed him my I.d. Once he found out I was on the registry he walked back and his demeanor changed. I said to him, if you need to give me a ticket, I understand but if I was not on the registry would you ruin my “Safe driver” on my license? He was not happy about it but let me go with a warning and I wished him a safe tour of duty.

I have seen two versions of this. One claimed to be from a CIA employee who feared going public, and thus would not give his name. Another was from a supposed retired FBI agent. They were both very close in verbiage – the first claiming to be from an actual ICAC manual.
We did submit that in our case. The Vancouver City prosecutor told the judge that this document was in a draft of the manual but never ‘official’. Was he lying? His lips were moving so probably. But without proof its of no use to anyone. I do believe it’s possible someone with a conscience made these suggestions, or that it was even incorporated at some point. Then ICAC realized how much money they could rake in without the morals clause! If anyone has a way to validate something like this please do reach out ASAP.

The ICAC Task Force is a lot of things. They are wasteful and cause harm. But they are not a secret police force.

Debi,
I’m not sure how the judge established that. Based on my recollection through my research on my forthcoming book, it comes from a pre-2017 copy of an ICAC training manual. The language highlighted herein is stripped out of later versions.

There has been considerable discussion as to whether or not it is a fake. When I first encountered it, I contacted the ICAC office in the USDepartment of JUstice, and they were VERY upset that I had access to it, and told me that should not have it. That suggests to me that perhaps it is authentic, but unless we can gain access other corroborating documents that can be autheticated for certain, we will not know.

Bear in mind that unless you were at that trial in Florida, you or I don’t know under what circumstances the document may have been disallowed from evidence. For example, in my trial, the court refused to allow unredacted/untouched texts and chats from me and the undercover cop, even though it was clear that the dates had been stripped out, and disparate conversations were mushed together as if they were the same. Even when I, under oath, explained to the judge that fact, he did not care. Simply ignored me. He had disallowed the chats because there was no Verizon representative to authenticate them!

Norm! Thank you for sharing and joining our conversation.

I don’t think it is true. A person in Florida tried to use it and the judge threw it out saying it was a fake document.