FL - Florida police lured innocent men into online sex stings and seized their property, records show

Original Article (Video available)

01/05/2015

By Travis Gettys

Police posed as underage teens online to lure men into breaking the law as part of an apparent revenue scheme by Florida law enforcement agencies, according to an investigation of newly released public records.

Emails and other online communications analyzed by WTSP-TV revealed that many of the men who were eventually arrested were not interested in meeting children but were instead seeking adult sex partners – until they encountered undercover officers.

Law enforcement agencies fought open-records requests by the TV station, which eventually gained access to investigation reports from cases that resulted in arrest – but not from those that did not.

Police fought the requests by claiming the investigations remained open, but one agency claimed it had already destroyed records from one sting just one month after it was conducted.

Clearwater police seized 19 cars in January 2014, the station reported, when a joint sting with the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office arrested 35 men in one weekend.

The two departments arrested at least 20 other men three months later and 11 more in September in similar stings that netted 12 more seized vehicles, the station reported.

One of the men arrested in the first sting paid $10,000 to get his 2014 Lexus returned, and the 24-year-old won’t get any of that money back even though all felony charges were eventually dropped in his case.

The station found that many of the men arrested in the stings had posted or responded to personal ads seeking adults, but police often steered the conversation to underage children or posed as adults with younger siblings who were interested in meeting.

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See Also:

• Law Enforcement Gone Bad
• To Catch a Non-Predator, Try Entrapment

FL - Why were service members targeted in local sex stings?

Original Article

08/26/2014

By Noah Pransky

Former Army JAG tells 10 Investigates the Air Force is breaking the law by participating in local sex stings where no military members are involved.

PINELLAS COUNTY - Not only have Central Florida law enforcement officers violated federal rules in conducting "To Catch a Predator"-inspired sex stings, but 10 Investigates has learned they may also violate longstanding federal law that prohibits the use of military resources to enforce state laws.

While Tampa Bay-area law enforcement agencies continue to refuse to turn over public records from questionable "predator" roundups, 10 Investigates has learned through court records that a member of the Air Force's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) has been a regular member of Central Florida undercover stings for more than a year.

In a recent deposition, the agent indicated his goal was to try and trap service members who might be willing to break the law. But he also admitted to targeting -- and helping arrest -- civilians as well. According to an operation plan from a recent Pinellas County sting, the agent, William Glidewell, acted as a "chatter," communicating with potential investigative targets online. He was put up in a Clearwater Beach hotel for four days and reported to the sting's lead agencies, the Clearwater Police Department and Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.

"It's odd that you would have a military (investigator) being so treated like civilian law enforcement," said Charles Rose, a Stetson Law professor and retired Army JAG Corps member. "You cannot assign military personnel -- on orders -- to a (local law enforcement) organization."

10 Investigates previously showed how the sex stings were taking valuable resources away from other areas of law enforcement and frequently targeted young men who were merely looking for women their own age.

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