Policing the predators

Rhett McQuiston makes a really good 12-year-old girl.

Sitting in front of a computer screen, the lieutenant with the Utah Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force poses as a girl, replying to instant messages, careful to use misspellings and lingo common for a preteen child.

"This guy's asking if I'm alone now," McQuiston says. "He's already talked to me about phone sex."

The Utah attorney general's ICAC task force recently allowed a Deseret Morning News reporter and photographer to accompany officers on a Saturday night as they worked an overtime shift, serving warrants for suspected child pornography and speaking with sexual predators online.

The ICAC task force arrests more people per capita than anywhere else in the nation.

"There's a bunch of different ways to measure number one. But if you measure number one by per capita productivity, we're certainly number one," said Ken Wallentine, the chief of law enforcement for the Utah Attorney General's Office.

Deseret Morning News graphic Story continues below    Text from an online chat. (Content is graphic, may be offensive to some readers.) (16kb .pdf file)

Such shocking numbers contradict Utah's reputation as a "family friendly state." ICAC authorities say the state is a target-rich environment for predators in a state that's known for its tech savvy.

"There's kids in the neighborhoods of Utah," Wallentine said. "A neighborhood chock full of kids is nirvana for a child predator."

The ICAC offices look like any other cubicle farm. Detectives have pictures of their wives and children tacked up next to computer monitors showing hard-core images and sexually explicit chats.

"We surf all chat rooms," McQuiston says. "AOL, MSN, Yahoo!, MySpace, everywhere."