It’s time for law enforcement to step in and stop vigilantes and opportunist “predator hunters”
They give themselves names like “Dads Against Predators”, “Predator Snatchers”, “Predator Patrol” or “POPSquad”. They are groups of vigilantes who admittedly intentionally stage bait operations to lure individuals to locations thinking they are meeting a minor for sex, so they can film them. The videos are then posted to social media sites, such as YouTube, where the vigilantes cash in on advertising revenue.
Predator Poachers, a group started just last year now has over 160,000 subscribers, Dads Against Predators boasts that it’s videos have more than 800,000 views and POPSquad has put up more than 160 videos. The groups think of themselves as guardian angels for children, but law enforcement is strongly opposed to them. The reasons their tactics are a very bad idea are obvious.
First, the public only sees the “take down” but knows nothing about the tactics that were used to bait their targets. Were they in an adult site where there would be no expectation they would be chatting with a minor? Did they pull a bait and switch, pretending to be an adult and then introduce a pretend minor who the target had no interest in meeting? Did they induce, encourage or entrap the person into conduct they had no interest in? Or, did they manufacture the entire “crime” to begin with just to produce a video? Second, there is no concern for the safety of the target or themselves for that matter. What if the confrontation turns physical? What if unrelated bystanders get hurt in an altercation? What happens if someone pulls a gun? Also, these stings are almost always useless to law enforcement or prosecutors because they don’t follow required protocols.
This article discusses one group’s tactics and you can see clearly where the bait and switch is:
Around mid-December, about two weeks before Christmas, Bee and Austin began the usual process, starting with a Grindr account with Bee’s picture (“I’m 19, but I look 15,” he says). In minutes, a 49-year-old man named “Adam” hit up Bee looking to meet Bee and “his brother.” “You gonna suck my dick tonight,” “Adam” messaged. “I’ll do whatever you wanna do hahaha,” responded Bee. “What about a threesome,” “Adam” said. “I’m sure he’ll be down,” Bee said.
They would meet in the bicycle section of the Walmart, as Bee suggested, where they had hid a camera on a nearby shelf. In the video it captured, a white-haired, bespectacled “Adam”—really an Akron-area teacher—strides up to Bee, hands pocketed. “Are you the guy? Adam?” Bee says, visibly anxious. “Do you wanna head outside?” Adam whispers. “So, what do you wanna do?” Bee, says, rubbing his chin.
Twenty seconds later, Bee’s crew rushes “Adam,” sticking their phones in his face. “What are you doing here, bro?” Bee shouts in a deeper voice. “You know I’m fifteen, right?” Adam scowls, aware he’s been busted. He throws up the hood on his windbreaker to hide his face and walks coolly to the exit. As he does, Bee screams to shoppers in the aisle, “Watch out, everyone! He’s here to meet a 15-year-old boy!”
Wait… did he say the “usual process” is to go on Grindr (a site whose Terms of Service state in capital letters, “NO USE BY UNDERAGE PERSONS. NO PERSONS UNDER THE AGE OF EIGHTEEN (18) YEARS (OR TWENTY-ONE (21) YEARS IN PLACES WHERE EIGHTEEN (18) YEARS IS NOT THE AGE OF MAJORITY) MAY DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY VIEW, POSSESS OR OTHERWISE USE THE GRINDR SERVICES. YOU MUST BE A LEGAL ADULT.”? Did he also say “I’m 19, but I look 15”? So he baits someone to a Walmart under the guise that he’s meeting an adult, but then accuses him of coming to meet a minor?
The article continues that when the school district saw the YouTube video the put him on administrative leave and removed him from the classroom. So an individual who was on an adult site, thinking he was meeting a consenting adult, gets accosted in a supermarket, shamed online and his career placed in jeopardy, What if he wasn’t out as gay? That’s a personal choice that should not have been taken away from him and forcibly outing someone is a violation of their privacy.
The article also continues to tell of another situation:
A few weeks after Jake’s video was posted on DAP’s Youtube channel, Joshua called me panicking. The day before, he did a catch with a man who was a well-known driving instructor in the Fremont area. The catch was surprisingly quick: He was waiting in his car outside Jay’s old house—waiting for sex with a 14-year-old—when Joshua rushed him with his camera on. The man sped off. “He told me, ‘I’ll be dead in the morning,’” Joshua says. The next day, Joshua received a frantic call from the Fremont Police: The man had hung himself in his living room.
There’s enough wrong with police stings that amateurs shouldn’t be conducting them and posting them to social media for profit or to become “internet famous”. It’s time that law enforcement stepped in to stop them.
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I’ve been saying the same thing for the past 5 years now regarding the idiotic reasoning that a person who goes to adult sites or chat rooms are somehow child predators. It’s pretty doubtful that actual, bona fide child predators would be trolling adult sites on the off chance they’d run into a minor, more so for a prepubescent in circumstances involving actual pedophiles. Personally, I think the public’s tendency to conflate pedophilia with underage, but post-pubescent individuals is another major misconception that needs to be addressed.
I really wish this article had a comment section. These guys are stupider than the LE agencies that do the same thing.
Dustin, you are precisely on point about language. Pedophilia is a precisely defined clinical term in the DSM-V. It is not valid to misuse the term in public discourse. As I said in a previous post regarding language leaking from its original context:
The term “pedophile” is one particularly relevant term. For example, Jeffrey Epstein is consistently referred to as a pedophile. He may have been many horrible things, but he was never accused of nor diagnosed with pedophilia. His victims were not prepubescent children, which is the core requirement for the diagnosis. Yet in public discourse, and in the media, this very specifically defined term is used only as a pejorative and has descended to the status of a “dog whistle.”
Fight ignorance wherever it is found.
Veritas.
These groups want nothing more than Facebook likes and to stir up the masses. There’s a group here in NE Florida doing these “stings” and they have zero regard for the families of their targets. (I believe they go by ACE) They did a sting video at this guys home, and they headed the video with some nonsense about “we made every effort to not show the family” and not to “harrass” the family. And yet, 2/3 of the video was of the wife reading the texts between her husband and the “bait” and another unknown family member openly sobbing and at one point their minor child(she went into the home off camera soon after the video starts) I should also note that at no time did this guy attempt to leave or hide his face, and yet the camera was focused on the other family for the majority of the video. My heart broke for the wife and child, being humiliated in that way and when I commented on the post how wrong it was for them to do that, zero sympathy from those who bothered to reply to my comment. Made me sick and just reinforced the blatant hypocrisy of those who think that was acceptable, especially concerning their minor child. Now, I will say, this guy was an idiot, this group had done their homework and had proof he was told not once, but 3 times that this” bait “was only 15, (they had printed the text messages and he didnt deny any of it) and yet he still invited her to his home for sex. But it absolutely doesn’t excuse the humiliation this family experienced. It still makes me angry.
Question from someone who has never been on a dating site like these: Do the sites bear some responsibility for not properly vetting the person who joins as an adult but then later falsely claims to be a minor?
I have a rather hilarious threat from Alex Rosen from Predator Poachers after I added him to my AZUnites vigilante watch. He also tried impersonating a lawyer to threaten me to remove my article about him; he then got google to take down my post about him less than 24 hours later.
Interestingly, Google has allowed a certain vigilante to use my name and likeness while making the most outlandish claims about me, so Goohle also has double standards.
Because Google are run by leftist communists. They silence/censor most conservative opinions. The left has a huge double standard (as if we didn’t know that). They’ll be more than happy to allow the use of their platform to degrade someone in a situation like ours yet at the same time they remain silent and censor any mention of top Democrats who have been to Epstein’s island. Imagine that.
One democrat who wanted to vote against the registry isn’t enough. The MeToo movement is a man hating leftist and feminist movement that will NEVER stand for abolishing the registry.
There are plenty of right wing nutjobs silencing our activism too. This is a bipartisan effort and both Dems and Repubs have passed laws against us.
The best solution to these sex scam operations is to avoid the sites. Find something productive to occupy time.
People should not have to stay away from dating sites no more than anyone had to stay away from the old school Newspaper classified ads for dating. Why weren’t police doing these types of stings back then? I met a woman through those that turned into a 5 yr relationship.
With a world of people out there, there is no telling who someone’s perfect match would be. Singles looking to meet other singles should not have to fear that they are going to be entrapped by some pissy cop who’s mad that the new employee at the donut shop didn’t give him his Public Servant discount that day.
People are free to access any website they want, but just be vigilant. I have been very fortunate in that I have never felt a need or been required to visit such websites to get to meet people. It is my desire to never give law enforcement the opportunity for misconduct…or any self proclaimed ‘savior of the public’.
The Dr. Phil show did a show on this which aired last December. Turns out that the guys that were doing this had drug problems and were even high when they were doing this. Seems like doing this was just another high for them.
One of the guys who was doing this was even accused of using a decoy (partner) who was accused of being an actual child predator. That means the person supposedly catching the “child predators” was one herself, just like that officer in Florida who was running these sex sting operations. Turned out he was the one.
https://youtu.be/Yeaz4odF_GI