Law enforcement conducted yet another undercover child-sex sting operation in Osceola County. The obvious hope is to arrest would be child molesters and abusers. The people who were caught up the sting will most likely be arrested for charges of traveling to meet a minor or solicitation of a minor.
Let’s be clear nobody wants children to get hurt or be molested and nobody is advocating the sexual abuse of children. However in many of these operations the police are on adults only websites and they are “catching” people who have never been in trouble. This is not to say that child abusers must have a record and clearly there is a first time for everything but if you look deeper into these operations and these statutes you are seeing that these crimes are mostly if not almost exclusively government created. In a previous article we have discussed some of the methodology used by law enforcement.
What exactly am I saying? Well in a prior case that we were defending we did a public records request for every arrest for traveling to meet a minor and solicitation of a minor cases. We found that there were only a handful of actual cases in Orange, Osceola, and Seminole counties. These are primarily government or law enforcement created crimes
There is a lot of federal money out there for these type of cases and local law enforcement is very willing to conduct these sting to secure their share of that money.
It is important to protect our children, but it is equally important to ensure that those who are arrested have their rights protected.
Andrew Moses
Andrew has been practicing criminal law his entire career. After graduating from law school he began working as an Assistant State Attorney prosecuting cases in Orange and Osceola Counties. During his time as an Assistant State Attorney, Andrew handled all types of cases ranging from misdemeanors to such serious felonies as drug trafficking and armed robbery. His experience as a prosecutor helped him gain perspective of the criminal justice system and how the government established its cases.
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