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Photo edited of screenshots of EPIC Youtube Page and Facebook page


GROUP OF OHIO CIVILIANS WHO ‘HUNT DOWN SEXUAL PREDATORS’ DENOUNCED BY
PROSECUTOR, SAYS THEY NEED TO STOP

Posted by: Eddie Molina|September 8, 2022 |Categories Caught on Camera, Featured
Share:

Cincinnati, OH: A group of self-proclaimed ‘child predator hunters’ recently
cornered a man whom they allege was a sexual predator looking for sex with a
minor- but law enforcement officials are not pleased with the group’s tactics.

The group, which goes by the Facebook group profile name as Exposing Predators
of Indiana’s Children, or EPIC, sets up civilian versions of sting operations
using chat apps to lure alleged sexual predators into a confrontation.

The organization, which maintains a Facebook group page that includes nearly
13,000 followers, then posts some of these ‘confrontation videos’ on their
Facebook page and YouTube channel.

Screenshot image of EPIC’s Facebook page.


THE FACEBOOK GROUP’S MESSAGE

According to a ‘pinned’ post on the page, one of the administrators of the
Facebook group wrote:

“Then I began helping research men who were talking to decoys they believed to
be children. I finally made my own decoy using my own picture and an app that
literally changes my appearance completely. I got on a 13-19 year old teen chat
app and within 2 hours 4 men asked to text me and meet me. My decoy is 14.”




 The post continues:

“The things I have seen and read would make a grown woman puke and these people
are doing this to who they think are children. PLEASE check your kids’ devices.
Criminals and sex offenders don’t have to come through your front door to hurt
your kids like they did when I was young. All they need is an app, computer or
cell phone to text.”

Pretty solid advice.

However, prosecutors and law enforcement officials denounce the group, calling
them ‘rogue’ and ‘vigilantes’ who put the public at risk.

The Sting Operation




Members of EPIC recently posed as a minor online using a teen chat app. They
then went on to lure a man they deemed a predator so they can meet him, confront
him and have him put in jail for his attempts to engage in illegal sex acts with
a minor.

When Chris Abercrombie, the founder of EPIC and other members met the man, they
confronted him and accused him of being a sexual predator.

EPIC leader Chris records himself confronting a man. Screenshot image of the
EPIC Facebook page.

Sounds like a noble cause and an honorable group.

Local police also responded to the scene of the meeting, questioned the alleged
predator who drove over 100 miles for the sexual encounter. But after a brief
conversation with the man, they let him go.

The man is not facing any charges.




Dave Frattare, an investigator with the Internet Crimes Against Children task
force, told FOX 19 of Cincinnati:

“They’re they’re judge and jury on the street here,” Frattare said. “We want
these groups to just stop what they’re doing. We wouldn’t treat our offenders
like this. We wouldn’t, you know harass them. We wouldn’t threaten them.”

Frattare continued:

“Yeah, I mean the environment that they’re creating here, I mean, they’re
putting the public at risk. They’re putting the public at risk. They’re putting
other bystanders at risk.”

Screenshot from EPIC FB page

A Cincinnati Prosecutor also told Fox 19:



“It’s frustrating to see our efforts overshadowed by people who have no
training, have no experience, are not even law enforcement officers, who believe
they’re protecting children. This information in the first place, it’s not
valid, it’s not legal, it’s not going to hold up in court.”

According to another prosecutor, the evidence collected by EPIC members are
generally invalid.

The Fox 19 column goes on to say:

“Prosecutors say the so-called evidence these groups compile is often unusable
in court. For example, Under Ohio, messages exchanged between alleged suspects
and people online are only admissible if the person is an actual child or a law
enforcement officer posing as a child..”

To Catch a Predator




Several years ago, a television series depicted a similar scenario that lured
sexual predators. However, the people who went online acting as underage
children were actually law enforcement officers.

Chris Hansen – Host, YouTube screenshot (courtesy of Chris Hansen YouTube
channel)

As the conversations progressed, law enforcement enticed these predators to a
meeting in person with a promise of sexual activity.

The television series, too, had their critics. But their mission met its purpose
as many of the predators ended up either in prison, jail, fined, had to register
as a sex offender for life- or all of the above.

The mission of EPIC is clear but how it will meet their goal of imprisoning who
they deem sexual predators remains unclear.

At the very least, they should continue to get the attention of law enforcement
officials and somehow help them get predators off the streets.



Our children deserve it.

 



Predators are even in school systems.


REPORT: FAULTY EMAIL ADDRESSES ALLOWED A CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER TO STAY EMPLOYED
AS A SCHOOL COUNSELOR

Posted August 25, 2022



FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA – On Monday, August 22nd, the Chesterfield County Police
Chief said that emails from the police department aimed at informing Fairfax
County Public Schools that a middle school counselor working in one of the
schools had been arrested and charged with soliciting prostitution from a minor
were sent to faulty email addresses.





In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, Chesterfield police said
that the department sent three emails in November 2020 to two different email
addresses for then-Superintendent Scott Braband.

Both email addresses were provided to a police staff member from someone working
in the school system’s office.

Karen Leonard, the records administrator for the Chesterfield Police Department
said that the department conducted a “further investigation” and learned that
the emails, in fact, were returned as undeliverable.




The Chesterfield Police Department send emails to three different email address
in its attempt to alert Fairfax County Public Schools that they had a convicted
sex offender on their payroll.

Fairfax County Public Schools fired former Glasgow Middle School counselor
Darren Thornton. He was arrested for soliciting sex from a minor in November
2020 and ultimately convicted of that crime in March 2022.





Chesterfield Police said the department had alerted the school of Thornton’s
arrest the day after it happened. However, those emails never actually made it
to Brabrand’s inbox. In a Facebook post on August 23rd, Police Chief Colonel
Jeffrey Katz said:

“Given the reality, the former superintendent had multiple email addresses
during his tenure, it is possible we were provided invalid or out-of-date
addresses when we asked how to make this notification. The technical nuances of
the email delivery failure are still unknown.”



 

Katze said that his department will continue to work with the school system to
figure out how the mistake occurred. He added:

“We are fully committed to working in partnership with Fairfax County Schools to
identify the issue and determine how we can avoid a lapse in communication in
the future.”

Katz also revealed that Thornton falsified information about where he worked
when registering on Virginia’s Sex Offender Registry. He said Thornton listed he
was “self-employed” when he was a counselor with Fairfield County Public
Schools.

The state’s corrections department said that it is investigating to see what
went wrong. In Virginia, some sex offenders are not allowed to live within 500
feet of a school.






Reportedly, Thornton was also arrested on June 9, following a separate sting
operation and charged with soliciting a prostitute and “residing in a bawdy
place.”

In that case, Katz said he was surprised to see Thornton still listed on the
Fairfax County Public Schools website as a counselor after his first arrest in
November 2020. The next day, on June 10th, Katz said the Chesterfield’s
department’s special victims unit supervisor called the school system to report
the arrest.

The department said there have also been follow-up communications with the
school system’s safety and security director, Tom Vaccarello.

According to the school system, Thornton was placed on administrative leave on
June 17th and fired during the third week of August.



The announcement of the bounced-back emails came a few days after Superintendent
Michelle Reid said she has launched an independent investigation into how
Thornton remained an employee as a counselor at Glasgow Middle School despite
the arrest and conviction.



Sex offenders are typically unpredictable.


CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER WHO LIVES IN HOMELESS SHELTER, WAS RELEASED ON NO BAIL
AFTER KNOCKING OUT A MAN WITH ONE PUNCH SENT BACK TO RIKERS ISLAND

August 23rd, 2022

NEW YORK CITY, NY – According to a report from Fox News, the suspect in a brutal
sucker-punch knockout attack that was caught in video, and who was released back
to the streets immediately following the violent act, has been returned to
Rikers Island amid public outcry.






The alleged suspect, identified as 55-year-old Bui Van Phu, was released without
bail on Thursday, August 18th. He was initially arrested on the night of August
17th on an attempted murder charge.

However, that offense was downgraded to a third-degree assault and second-degree
harassment charge, both of which are misdemeanor offenses that are not
bail-eligible under New York state’s 2020 enacted controversial bail reform law.

Video released by the NYPD allegedly shows Phu putting on work gloves on Friday,
August 12th just before approaching 52-year-old Jesus Cortes, a Mexican
immigrant whom he never met, and delivered a single blow to the back of his
head.

The sucker punch was so strong, it immediately laid Cortes out on the concrete.




As of Saturday, August 20th, Cortes remains in a coma after suffering a skull
fracture, broken cheek and brain bleed.

Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul, a strong supporter of the bail reform
law that was enacted under her predecessor Andrew Cuomo, said that following the
public outcry of Phu’s initial release she contacted Bronx District Attorney
Darcel Clark and ordered correctional officials to “immediately examine” if Phu
violated parole conditions following the August 12th unprovoked attack of
Cortes.





At a subsequent corrections hearing, a state correctional official told a judge
that Phu was a member of the notorious Born to Kill street gang, initially
founded in the 1980s by first-generation Vietnamese immigrations.

After that hearing, Phu was re-arrested on Friday, August 19th and returned to
Rikers Island on Saturday, August 20th. At the hearing regarding Phu, Department
of Corrections and Community Service Officer Nixon Ribera, said in a statement:



“He has a substantial risk of not returning to his parole.”

According to reports, Phu is also a convicted sex offender. State records show
that Phu sexually abused a 17-year-old girl in 1994.

He was previously convicted of first-degree sex abuse in the Bronx in 1995 and
was sentenced to six years to life in prison. He was paroled in 2019 and is now
registered as a Level 3 sex offender, which is the most serious designation.

Upon learning of Phu’s past criminal record, Cortes’ siblings expressed outrage
that their brother’s attacker was released to the streets in the first place.
Veronica Cortes said in a statement:

“That kind of person shouldn’t be out on the street. I felt helplessness and
anger and sadness because that person who did the damage does not know the
damage he did to the whole family.”






Phu was also allegedly charged with criminal possession of a weapon and robbery
in New York City back in the 1990s. Phu lives about four blocks from the
restaurant where he knocked out Cortes.

He lives at the Help USA men’s shelter and works as a security guard.

In response to the initial release of Phu after knocking out Cortes, the
president of the Maryland Fraternal Order of Police has called for the firings
of those responsible for releasing such a violent individual.

Clyde Boatwright said in a statement:



“All of these people who had a hand in this gentleman being released should step
down or be removed from office.”

With New York’s bail reform policies serving as a revolving door for detained
criminals, Boatwright said it’s not up to judges to “step up and … put the guy
in jail,” adding:

“The criminal justice system needs to address this violent crime and men like
this should not be allowed to be on the streets to victimize anyone else.”



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Eddie Molina




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