"There was no reason for a 29-year-old man to be talking to 12-year-olds," said the Fairfield, Calif., Police Department detective. "I wanted to do something about it, but there was nothing I could really do. There was no law violation."
Carden messaged the man from his son's MySpace account, telling the man to get lost or he'd come looking for him. "That worked but it bothered me because as a cop I'm always thinking of ways to use resources in a legal way, and as a parent I knew we had no resources for handling this except what I was doing."
At the same time, Carden was working with the FBI and SEARCH, the National Consortium for Justice Information and Statistics, on a case of a pimp who liked to turn out underage girls. When that case concluded he mentioned to SEARCH’s Lauren Wagner, a high-tech crime specialist, the situation with his son.
What the two eventually came up with is the Fairfield Police's No. 1 Friend Program. The program allows youngsters to set the police department as their No. 1 friend on MySpace, which displays the department's logo on their page.
The program’s purpose is to ward off any undesirables online and allow young people or their parents the opportunity to alert police if they’re being harassed or contacted inappropriately.
"So if the same thing happened now, [as a parent] I would take that message and forward it to the local police department's MySpace page and say, 'This guy has been contacting my 12-year-old and it's not appropriate. Can you assist?"' Carden said. "The police department would forward that message to the predator and say, 'This is Detective Carden of the Fairfield Police Department. You've been flagged as having tried to contact a 12-year-old kid whose parents don't want this contact. Cease and desist or we will come and talk to you about why you're contacting him.'"
So far more parents than kids have signed on to the program, but Carden just began marketing it to high school and junior high students this school year. Of course, youngsters are resistant to associate with cops on their MySpace pages, but Carden thinks he can convince them that it's a good idea. "I think when they meet me and ask questions they'll be a lot more likely to use it."
One girl recently asked Carden for help. Some student pranksters had created a fake MySpace page in her name and began posting pictures and unflattering blogs about her. Carden sent a message to the fake page saying he was a cop and if the page didn’t come down in five days he'd start a search warrant process. The page was taken down within a day.
Until recently, the Fairfield Police Department had just the MySpace page and everything — alerts, press releases and conversations with parents — went on that page. The department has now opened Twitter and Facebook accounts for the news releases and alerts. The MySpace page will be used only to help young people safeguard themselves from online predators.
[Photo courtesy of Leif Skoogfors/FEMA.]
