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Officers Reach Beyond Beat's Boundaries
Despite their department having no travel budget, Officer John Chapman, right, and Detective Charlie Gardiner of the Dumfries Police Department found ways to journey 400 miles to Ohio in an Internet child predator investigation.
(By Jahi Chikwendiu -- The Washington Post)
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Chapman started his career with the Arlington County Sheriff's Office, then worked for the Dumfries Police Department in the early 1990s before joining Prince William police in 1992. But he missed the small-town environment of Dumfries and came back in April.
So, with support from the chief, he attended a one-week training course run by the Northern Virginia/Washington, D.C. Internet Crimes Against Children task force, which helps local police fight Internet predators.
When he returned in July, he told the chief he'd work part time and come in on his days off. All he needed was a laptop.
"We thought it was a great idea," Johnson said. "We know that the biggest wave of the next horizon of crime is Internet crime, but as a small department, we can't designate someone to do this full time."
Chapman was issued a blue Toshiba laptop, and he set up shop on his desk in the corner of the squad room, known as "the bullpen." In July, he went online, posing first as a 14-year-old girl. He was inundated with propositions from older men.
Sometimes, Chapman has to leave in mid-chat. "If I'm on the computer and a call comes in, we're going to shut the computer down and take care of business," he said. "I'll say, 'I gotta go,' and then hopefully I can find the person online again."
Chapman met one man in a Pokemon chat room who said he was 20 and from Ohio. Soon, Chapman said, the man sent him photographs of nude boys in various sexual poses. The man gave Chapman the password to his Hotmail account, where Chapman said he found more than 200 additional child porn images.
The man also gave Chapman his name and sent a picture of himself in his high school graduation gown. "It had an eagle on the back, and I could barely make out the letters 'ville,' " said Chapman, who quickly discovered the suspect lived in Monroeville.
It was time to go to Ohio. But when Chapman was told that his department couldn't send him, he turned to the Prince William Commonwealth's Attorney's Office.
"We don't have any independent funds for investigations like that,'' recalled Tom Seaha, a prosecutor who had been tracking Chapman's investigation and said he was sorry he couldn't help. Seaha said he admired Chapman's enthusiasm, but he urged him to turn over the case to Ohio authorities.
"I gave up. But they found a way to go," Seaha said of Chapman and Gardiner. "When everyone told them there was no money, they found a way to go."
Legally, Chapman didn't have to go to Ohio. But he felt a need to eyeball the suspect in the case he had begun. Plus, he said, going might enable him to collect evidence for his investigation of the suspect in Virginia.
