Interdiction For The Protection of Children Podcast for June 2011 Beat Intro Voiceover 00.08 This is the Beat – a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation. Interview Jeremy Writt 00.15 Hello. I’m Jeremy Writt, on behalf of the Cops Office. I’m here today with Sergeant Derek Prestridge of the Texas Department of Public Safety to talk to you about Interdiction for the Protection of Children. Sgt. Prestridge, what are the key components of your course and what can students expect to learn? Sgt. Prestridge 00.32 Well, the course, interdiction of course means to intervene – and the class is designed to intervene on behalf of children, in order to protect children. The primary focus of the class itself is directed towards educating the first-line officer – the patrol officer – because we’re aware that it’s the patrol officer that has more contacts with the public and is at a greater potential of coming into contact with child victims or the subjects that pose a threat to those children. In regards to the components of the course, we look at a few things. One of the things we look at are we want to make the student aware of the complexity of the different behavioral patterns that exist amongst offenders and also make the student just aware of the varying types of offenders that are out there – from the offenders that will try to commercially exploit a child victim to the offenders that will actually engage in assaulting the child. We also might try and make the student aware of the dynamics and the complexities of the dynamics of the child victim itself and make the student aware of the varying types of victims and some of the things that they are exposed to as victims. Jeremy 01.52 You spoke about some of the dynamics of the child victims. One thing that I thought was interesting is how often it is these kids are unable to disclose abuse when the opportunity presents itself. Why is that? Sgt. Prestridge 02.03 Well, from what we can gather and the way that we convey it to the student – because this can be very confusing to the public and oftentimes, it’s what makes it very difficult to get these trials prosecuted, these cases prosecuted and even law enforcement officers themselves, without the proper education, just don’t have an understanding of it. And what we teach the student – it can actually be numerous variables that can play a role in the dynamics of the victim themselves and the child that will prevent them from crying out or disclosing. It can be something – it can be just one or multiple things – for example the duration of the victimization itself can play a role in it, the authority position that the suspect or the offender has on or over the child victim. It can also be the support system that is or is not in place for the child. Of course, if there is a really good support system in place, then that can be very beneficial to the child. Of course, if it’s absent, that can also play against the child coming out and disclosing. Another thing is the age of the child. And again, it can just be one of these variables or it can be multiple variables that can play a role into whether or not the child decides to disclose or outcries – or how much of the victimization that the child may disclose to someone. Jeremy 03.25 So it sounds like you’re not just educating the law enforcement professional or you’re educating them also on how they need to educate and interact with their community. Are there any particular ways these first-line officers can use his or her community partnerships to create solutions to some of these problems? Like kidnapping or human trafficking? Sgt. Prestridge 03.44 Yes, absolutely. And the approach of this particular training is that we have stressed a multi-disciplinary approach. Because of the dynamics and the complexity dealing with child victims and also the potential for the offenders themselves, there’s just too much to look into and to try and remain alert for, for just one specific agency or one particular officer. So we strongly encourage that the officers and the agencies make use of a lot of the resources that are available – that they get out and they communicate and they liaison. Prime example with the Child Protective services – we strongly encourage that. The class itself, we actually bring in our own VPS crime victim counselors to come in and to make the students aware of what resources are out there. By no means are we encouraging these officers to conduct forensic interviews. We’re just simply encouraging the officer to conduct an initial contact, just to ensure that there’s an awareness that the child is even present. There are experts out there that can provide assistance to the child and we encourage these agencies and these officers to make use of those resources. On a federal level and on a state level, we strongly encourage that agencies and officers make use of any local child advocacy centers and that they liaison, they invite them to the meetings and they actually develop a rapport and a really good working relationship with these other resources to work in an effort to save and help these children. Jeremy 05.18 Not all of these kids are kidnapped like the public perception would be. How does this course help officers learn how to identify and intervene in situations that don’t involve kidnappings – say, like a runaway situation? Sgt. Prestridge 05.31 Well, and that’s a really good point. In the class itself, we really emphasize the awareness of runaway/throwaway child. They do make up an account for the largest number of missing children in the nation. Although there are a lot of abductions and different varying types of abductions, we really strongly encourage that the officers take time and quite possibly refocus their attention or at least their belief of what the runaway consists of. And through that, we believe that they’ll actually identify perhaps maybe the reasons why the child is running away, which could potentially lead to an investigation because the child could be running away from a harmful environment, which we have learned is very possible. And then also, on the other side of that, the child, because of their status of running away and their attempt to survive and the way that they’ve been exploited – that they could be exploited commercially – and then that would lead to other criminal investigations. Oftentimes with the runaways, sometimes they run away because they have been approached either online or through other means and they don’t realize that they’re a victim at the time, which just creates another challenge whenever you’re speaking to these children – they don’t view themselves as a victim. And oftentimes, the officer may be met with resistance. And so we try to educate the officers that these are the different types of components and the different challenges that they may be met with in addition to the family abductions, of course, and the other types of abductions that do exist out there. Jeremy 07.04 That seems like a very difficult crime to mitigate. Have you heard any success stories since you’ve been giving this course? Has anyone who’s taken the course come back to you and said that they’ve been able to save some of these vulnerable children or identify some of these offenders? Sgt. Prestridge 07.19 Yes we actually, we began teaching the class internally and we’re still in the process of trying to complete the education process for all of our commissioned personnel. We began the training in 2009. In 2008 we could not, as a state agency, we could not account for the recovery of one single missing child. And considering the size of our state – and that’s with conducting approximately 3 million traffic stops just for 2008. We of course realized that this is a reporting problem, but because it is a reporting issue, we realized first-hand that if it’s worth reporting, then people are going to pay attention to it and it will draw an awareness to it. For 2010, to our delight, we can account for the recovery of 14 missing children of varying degrees. Some were as a result of family abductions – we’ve had several family abductions where we were able to recover the children. We’ve had some instances, one in particular, where through the troopers investigation techniques, actually was able to identify two juveniles that were with an adult subject that were actually missing – however the parents didn’t even realize they had actually been missing. And the trooper, in our belief, was able to intervene – interdict, if you will – and prevent the assault of at least one of those children. We’ve actually had instances where our troopers now are beginning to pay closer attention to the runaways and as a result, we recovered one runaway who was actually being commercially exploited. We were able to identify the offender that was exploiting her – also known as a pimp – and in the process we were able to remove her from the harmful event. And this also led to an investigation across state lines and we’ve been able to identify several other cases where children are being exploited through means of over the internet and we’ve also identified several suspects. As I stated before, we teach and educate the officers how to gather intelligence on suspects, because we realized very quickly in an attempt to identify indicators that someone may be a threat to a child, there may not always be a crime that is being committed. However, that is useful information that the officer may obtain. And to the process, another instance of our multidisciplinary approach – we will report this information to our intelligence center, our fusion center. And just like after 9/11, we began collecting information on people that – suspicious people taking photographs of bridges and refineries – we’re doing the same thing with information now regarding people that may show indications that they pose a high-risk threat to children. And we’re able to analyze that information and based on the research we’re able to assign investigators if it deems necessary. So we’ve seen a tremendous amount of success, considering it has definitely been well received by the officers. We did focus, as I said before, on the officers because of their contact with the public and it’s really been well received by them and they’ve definitely been applying these techniques we’ve provided them which has contributed back to the program. We’ve been able to use actual events to show the success of it and also to give an example to the student of how they can apply the techniques. Jeremy 10.49 That’s outstanding. How can other law enforcement professionals get more information on your course and what steps do they take in order to maybe implement some of these techniques in their jurisdictions? Sgt. Prestridge 11.01 We are working on obtaining funding for the class so that we can begin providing the class for free to other agencies because we want to push this information out for free. And in the meantime, we will travel to assist other agencies that provide the class. Our longterm goal is to provide the training at a level where the agencies can conduct the training themselves, they can teach the training themselves to other agencies within their own agency – to teach them how to build rapport with their intelligence centers, with their local child advocacy centers, with their child protective services and hopefully so that it can pick up in other areas. In order to obtain this particular type of training from us, we just ask that you send us an email, give us a phone call. I’m located at the Texas Department of Public Safety Office in Austin, TX and you can email me at derek.prestridge@txdps.state.tx.us. I’m also located in the main website and we can begin working on providing your agency assistance on what training is available. Jeremy 12.12 Well we certainly encourage listeners to get in contact with you because we would like to see those success stories duplicated all around the country. On behalf of the Cops office, I’m Jeremy Writt. Beat Exit Voiceover: The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice Cops Office. The Cops Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing partnerships and solving problems. ####END OF TRANSCRIPT####