APD using new techniques to catch up with child predators

August 13, 2011

tonight we're getting a rare look inside a room where albuquerque police work to keep your children safe from online predators. using the technology in that room..... detectives just arrested a man they say tried to entice a 15 year old girl into sex. they say he even went to a home to meet the child.. joe vigil is here with the story. that 15 year old girl the man met online was actually an apd detective. and when the say he showed up at a home for sex with her---he was quite stunned to see police instead. this is a room not seen by many. we're not saying where it's located in albuquerque. it's full of high tech equipment to catch suspected online predators like charles boston from albuquerque. after meeting online--- a texted conversation between boston and a 15 year old girl got hot and heavy according to authorities. a search warrant indicates he and an apd detective--posing as a 15 year old girl-- talked about using protection. but boston said he couldn't get anyone pregnant. in the warrant boston admits to sending the girl a picture of his genitals. police say boston agreed to meet the girl for sex at an albuquerque home where police were waiting. "he was extremely surprised. definitely did some screaming. shocked. "typical tried to talk his way out of it." this police sergeant is undercover. he says police made the arrest with the help of all of this equipment. officers browse the internet and even have highly specialized equipment to catch those sharing child pornography. and it's not just albuquerque officers. law agencies around the state get training and equipment through a federal internet predator program called icac. the a-g's office distributes fedel grant money. the police seargeant says there are a lot of predators online and detectives are eagar to catch them. "most of us are family men and have kids of our own, so it's definitely something personal to us that we have people preying on our kids. so what we're doing is, we're making our own backyards safe." and here's something relatively new with the program--police say they're using abandoned city owned homes as meeting points with men and they're fake underage victims.