Fla. child sex sting nets 22 suspects, including Methodist pastor who volunteered in schools

WaPo ^ | 09-16-2016 | Peter Holley

[NRx]

The men come from any number of backgrounds and range from young to old.

In the end, Pensacola police said, they were united by a common goal: having sex with minors.

During a five-day stretch that ended Sunday, all 22 of the men — including a pastor from a Florida church — were dragged down by “Operation Undertow,” an Internet sting in which undercover agents lured suspected child predators via computer to an undisclosed Florida location, police said.

The men were snagged after they responded to ads for sex with teenage males and females created by agents on “various websites,” police said. Once the men initiated conversations with investigators, police said, warrants were issued for their arrest.

When the suspects showed up at the designated location, they were taken into custody and charged with traveling to meet after using a computer to lure a child.

Police called the effort “the largest multi-jurisdictional Internet sting” since the department arrested 25 men during a one-week-long sting in 2011.

“It is through the collaborating, partnering and building relationships that we protect our children and make the Internet a safer place,” Pensacola Police Chief David Alexander III said in a statement. “This effort of arresting and prosecuting these individuals helps to stop future abuse. This was five days of hard work for our officers, dispatchers, support personnel and personnel from other agencies, in addition to the planning of this operation.”

[Bigg Red]

Yep. But we are just pervophobes.

[Bigg Red]

Or perhaps there are many more demons roaming our country than there were when more people attended worship services and followed the Ten Commandments more closely.

[jch10]

That “pastor’s” church is two miles from my home. The church must be devastated. Thanks to the Escambia County police officers who took these perverts off the streets.

[Chode]

[Tax-chick]

It makes me wonder if there are just less good people as a %, or if they get pornified and whipped into a porn/sex froth with all the social media and instant gratification, or if these weirdos were always there but it was harder to connect for them so we didn’t know about them.

Some of all of the above, I think.