Polk County Pick’Em II
We’re so annoyed!!!
Just days ago, we posted a fun article titled “Polk County Pick’Em” that poked a little fun at Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd’s sting operations. The article, which can be read here (https://floridaactioncommittee.org/polk-county-pickem/) presented a satirical contest, inviting readers to predict whether Judd would conduct another sting next month, what that sting would be called, and whether there would be more teachers, police officers or Disney employees arrested.
Then BAM! No less than 4 days pass and the “King of Sting” delivered! Today’s headline reads “Disney employee, 12 others arrested in Polk County child sex sting, deputies say” Wow! Less than a week later, “Operation Cyber Guardian 2″, Disney employee and all! All I can say is absolute WOW! The speed and precision of this man is unparalleled. His ability to bait and switch is better than most used car salespeople, and we mean that as a compliment!
OK Grady, we see you! You’re good alright, but how good are you really? Here’s the challenge… 2 weeks… TWO Disney employees… one member of law enforcement… and one school employee… but here’s the catch; the school employee must be a Principal!
So satire over and back to reality…
We’ve written exhaustively about these stings and how, in many cases, they find lonely, gullible people on adult dating sites, lure them into a sexually charged conversation, and then introduce a fictional minor into the equation. Admittedly in some cases there are people intentionally looking for minors, but in many (if not most) of these reverse stings, these are people who were looking for an adult on an adult website, who never started out looking to commit a crime, but after a lot of coercion and misdirection, get sucked into a manufactured one.
As much as we need to warn children about the risks of online predators who actively seek them out, we need to warn the “average Joes” out there about these traps.
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Unpopular opinion but I have to say I was shocked by the mentality of most of the child sex offenders I met in prison while working in the law library. I honestly don’t care that the SOR exists. However I wish the process of the requirement was administered differently. I think that mental evaluation and judgement by authority having jurisdiction should be required. Some of these ppl need to be constantly observed. They have a mental issue regarding their sexual attitudes. I find myself at times conflicted bcz I don’t believe I deserve to be registered but “that guy” def needs to be watched. The blanket method the current registration follows is deff wrong but I’m not sure I can’t agree it isn’t effective. It may be poorly effective maybe very poorly effective but it passes the eye test if you know some of these ppl are mentally unable to accept the sexual social norms.
I know what you mean. At one facility, I had a top bunk, and the guy on the bottom bunk also had a csc charge. I don’t like to judge, but you could tell just by looking at him that he was your typical “chomo”. You know what I mean. Anyway, this guy obviously didn’t learn his lesson because he would spend all day gluing pictures of little girls in those little bible group booklets. He had dozens of them. He also would write stories about his fantasies and dreams. Really sick stuff. I’m not one who would look to get someone busted, nor was I a rat in prison, but I told the rest of the guys in my cubicle about it and one guy ended up grabbing a couple of the booklets and the tablet he wrote his stories on and took them to staff. I don’t know if the guy ever got into trouble over it, but staff did come get him and put him in one of the temporary holding cells at the control center. I was ok with that because his hygiene was extremely poor and everyone kept telling him to get in the shower.
Anyways, while I despise the registry, this is the kind of guy who it was designed for because he needs to be watched carefully. If you’re doing time for a sex crime, and instead of dealing with your problems in a healthy way by getting therapy you’re collecting pictures of kids and writing out your fantasies, you’re probably going to do something really stupid when released.
I have to disagree with you because as long as you rely on a fallible process to arbitrarily determine who is “high risk” the system will continue to expand. As long as the registy exists in any fashion, it will continue to expand. You could maybe fora brief time convince legislators to shrink the registry to only “high risk” registrants, but how do we determine who is at risk to reoffend?
Instead of making folks jump through fiery hoops to get off the SOR, they should filter so only the worst get on. That’s IF a registry should exist at all.
I have a theory of why we don’t see any of dudes boys get caught. There are 2 . one is because they know which sites they’re buddies are targeting and when they are doing a sting. The second is because the ones doing the texting are the ones who think this is the way kids act are the same ones who would be trying to hook up with these type of kids. They type there own fantasys about what they would like then push it off on someone else to arrest and say how bad that person is and how good they are
I have watched the show to catch a predator which is the same as what he does. I was shocked to see how many people they catch that are repeat offenders. I am sure there are plenty that we’re lured in and would have not done anything like this, if it wasn’t for the setup. I feel the are doing some good on getting to repeat offenders. Parents really need to educate the children so they would not have to do these stings.
I’d like to see some reporter ask Elmer Fudd about murder, drug dealing, gangs, domestic abusers, and white collar crime in Polk County and how well his department addresses those issues since his primary (exclusive?) effort appears to be these stupid bait and switch schemes.
Check out the academic study:
Harm in the Digital Age: Critiquing the Construction of Victims, Harm, and Evidence in Proactive Child Luring Investigations.
It’s by Lauren Menzie and Taryn Hepburn. It’s done in Canada, but it applies perfectly to our proactive sting cases too. It’s all the same thing, done by people with the same mentality. It’s not about trying to protect children from real harm at all. It’s about policing sex behaviors that apparently offends them, like LGBTQ sex and BDSM.
Personally, I think these people also conduct these sting operations because they use them to play out their own fantasies about minors throwing themselves sexually at men. And it looks like it becomes an addiction for some or many of them. I think Sheriff Shady is at that level.
And by the way, we’ve done the research. The facts show that real minor victims are being lured from Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, video game chatrooms or other video game online communities, and/or other chatrooms geared towards minors. There was even a case where the individual who was targeting children was contacting children through their school computers. Needless to say, it’s consistent with all other evidence that children are lured from places where everybody knows children can be found, not from adult hookup or sex platforms where no one expects to find minors. None of these people who are running these “child predator” sting operations in all the wrong places can explain this. Their goal is to not talk about those important facts. We know they’re NOT posing as minors (to begin with) and acting like real minors do online on the platforms that real minors use and where we know that minors have been lured from.
The one challenge he will never succeed in is to see a news camera and just say “No comment” or not open his condescending self serving mouth and just walk away.