Rhode Island Combating Online Predators

Rhode Island Gov. Donald L. Carcieri yesterday announced a comprehensive four-point plan to protect children from online predators. The governor's Combating Online Predators (COP) plan will increase the state police's capabilities to track predators who seek to lure children via the Internet, toughen the penalties for online stalking, and enhance the training for local police departments and for children and their parents.

"The Internet has become a breeding ground for those who want to take advantage of our children, and we must do all that we can to protect them from these predators," Carcieri said. "That means stepping up the efforts of our law enforcement agencies to find these offenders before they can do harm to our children, increasing the penalties for those who solicit minors online, and reaching out to children and their parents about the dangers posed by the Internet."

"Last week, I convened the Safe Schools Summit to bring together law enforcement officials and educators about how we can better protect students and teachers while they are in school," the governor said. "The predators we are talking about today can reach our children while they are on the computers at home."

The governor's comprehensive, four-point Combating Online Predators (COP) plan will:

• Establish an online anti-predator unit at the Rhode Island State Police. The State Police will supplement its Computer Crime Unit with additional resources to focus exclusively on the tracking of predators and fund two new positions in the Fiscal Year 2008 budget for this purpose. Approximately 50 percent of the workload for this unit is related to solicitation of minors. There are three detectives in this unit, and there is a backlog with their investigations.
• Increase the penalties for those who solicit minors online. Carcieri will submit legislation in January to make it a felony to stalk minors online. The governor will also resubmit legislation that he first submitted last year to increase from five years to 10 years the penalty for indecent solicitation of a child. He had included this provision in his "Jessica's Law" legislation.
• Develop an enhanced training program for local police departments. The Rhode Island State Police will lead an effort to train, on an ongoing basis, local police departments on issues related to Internet-related sexual predators.
• Better coordination with local school districts. The RI Department of Elementary and Secondary Education will enhance its work with the RI State Police, local school districts, parent-teacher organizations, and national organizations, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, to develop effective ways of teaching children and parents about the dangers of online predators and to help them recognize the threat.

Carcieri noted that a survey last year by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children showed that only five percent of minors who were solicited online reported the encounter to a law enforcement agency or Internet service provider. And the same survey reported that 65 percent of parents and 82 percent of children were not aware of where they could report an unwanted online sexual encounter.

In addition, RINET (Rhode Island Network for Educational Technology) reports that 80 percent of school districts block the Myspace Web site, while only 40 percent block Web blogs.