There’s a thing in the LA Times today, about a group of police that spend all day, every day, hunting child porn creators. I just simply don’t know how the hell they do it. There’s a new thing that they’re doing now (now being over the last two years), where they literally photoshop the victim out of the photo, and then circulate the images and try to figure out where the photos have been taken. They’ve made slightly more than 500 arrests (world-wide) in the last couple of years doing this sort of work, but I can’t imagine the soul-crushing and nightmares that would come along with this sort of monster hunting. The article is not a happy-funtime read, but it is a quick peek into what’s being used these days, and a fairly simple method of tracking down where these things are being created.
Other things are not so easy to shake. Gillespie says he has nightmares about the young girls beyond their reach. While shopping at Wal-Mart, he sometimes finds himself staring at children, thinking that he has seen them online. Krawczyk says that after three arrests of Boy Scout leaders in Canada in the last six months, he won’t let his son join the local troop. Bulmer says he walks down the street looking at other men, thinking, yep, he looks like a pedophile. Yep, that guy is one for sure.
If I got into that kind of hunting, it would be extremely difficult to not go outside with a baseball bat in each hand, going “What?” at everyone who gave me the slightest creepy feeling. I’ve thought about it: working for the good guys, but I would end up just hating the world in very short order.
I remember once I was driving along Broadway, about to cross Cambie, and I stopped at a red light. My friend Emma and I sat there talking about nothing in particular, and someone was walking in front of the car (in the crosswalk). Nothing special about them, I don’t remember any details about the person at all, in fact. As he walked in front of the car, Emma’s foot slammed into the carpet on the passenger side, and she braced her hand on the dash. She looked at me with this “What the hell are you doing?” expression on her face.
The car hadn’t moved. Neither had I.
But I sure as hell felt it.
I wanted to run that guy the hell over. Wanted him dead. I was angry, mean, and strong.
For no reason.
My ol’ sensei, David, would’ve said that it was the “grandfathers” making the call. During my training, there were always questions about how much force was used, and how to deal with something random. David always said that you simply defended yourself and/or those that couldn’t defend themselves, and let the grandfathers decide how much force to use, or when to stop.
This guy with the car though? It made me wanna jump out, grab him, and yell “What did you DO?”
I wonder if these cops can still hear the grandfathers, and grandmothers, and the kids that weren’t saved before it was too late.
Bulmer, a goateed 16-year veteran with bleached spiky hair, speaks longingly of finding an 11-year-old girl he has tracked since 2002. After extensive analysis of online videos of her, the team has pinpointed her location to a city in the American Northwest and handed the case to the local police.
“Why can’t they find her?” he asks. “Give me a plane ticket and I’ll go there and find her myself.”
Bulmer, you let me know she’s in my city, and I’ll pick you up at the freakin’ airport, baseball bats in hand.
