Randolph James got a chilling lesson on the proliferation of Internet crime when he launched a computer training class two years ago for police officers and prosecutors at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn.
A pedophile made contact with James’ student seconds after he cast into cyberspace.
“It was like throwing a fishing line in the water. Before you could say, `Come on,’ he hooked the `Catch of the Day,’ ” recalled James, who directs the Suburban Law Enforcement Academy at the college and has 31 years of law-enforcement experience at the local and federal levels.
Crime is down in DuPage and east Kane Counties, law officers say, primarily because of a robust economy, low unemployment rate and dynamic community-policing programs in neighborhoods crisscrossing the landscape.
The Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority reported in June 1999 that violent crime–slayings, sexual assault and battery–has been on a downward slide since 1994. In Chicago’s collar communities, which include DuPage and Kane towns, violent crime fell 27.4 percent between 1994 and 1998, despite sizable population gains.
Statisticians predict a dip when the 1999 Illinois State Police crime report is released this spring. Preliminary tabulations show that crime in DuPage from January through September 1999 declined 9.9 percent from the same period in 1998. Aurora, which has seen a 17 percent drop in violent crime since 1993, is expected to show a 5.3 percent decrease in 1999.
“DuPage, on the whole, has one of the lowest crime rates in America,” DuPage County Sheriff John Zaruba said. “From a socioeconomic point of view, education–just the type of people–this is a very good place to live.”
Yet Internet crime here seems to be growing at a Zip-drive rate.
Fraud. Extortion. Pornography. Harassment. Theft. Abduction. Sex crimes. Privacy infringements. Auctions for Hummel figurines that don’t exist. You name it, cyber-crime has appeared in computer-literate DuPage and east Kane Counties.
Detective Mike Sullivan and his six colleagues who form the Naperville Police Department’s Internet Crime Unit have earned national reputations for weeding out the dicey forces that prey on innocent kids, naive consumers and trusting adults. More than 200 cases have been investigated since 1998–up from the single case in 1994, the year Naperville began tracking computer crime. Now, the unit averages one call a day for help.
Child predators are so pervasive, Sullivan said, it takes a mere 30 seconds for a would-be offender to connect with a potential victim.
“Internet fraud is increasing at an alarming rate,” he said. “There’s always been the adage that you can steal more with a pen than you can with a gun. Well, you can steal a whole lot more with a computer than you can a pen.”
But while the Internet makes it simple for people to commit a crime, James said, laws are being passed on the state and federal level to protect individuals–especially children–from computer crimes. The DuPage state’s attorney’s and Illinois attorney general’s offices have been “very active” in this area, he said.
The College of DuPage and cyber-sleuths like Sullivan also have made it their mission to teach law enforcers about telltale signs to track criminals. In the last two years, more than 200 certificates have been handed to the officers, deputies and prosecutors who have taken the class that James, Sullivan and other experts teach.
In addition to lectures on computer crime investigation, the students get 40 hours of hands-on experience in a computer lab.
The students learn how to get into a chat room, Sullivan said, and work on various computer programs and formats to learn how to investigate a computer crime and conduct a sting operation. The students then can take these programs and formats to their respective police departments or agencies to perform follow-up work and make an arrest.
“As far as I know, this is the only class in the country where there will be a felony committed during training, where a case is taken back to a police department for an arrest,” Sullivan said. “This is the kind of work that police, over the next five to 10 years, are going to have to deal with.”
Crime-fighting is not limited to the Internet. Trends are being tracked and alliances formed to create multijurisdictional task forces deployed to respond to spikes in crime.
When the investigators and prosecutors saw, for instance, that arson was up but arrests were down, police and fire officials joined forces with the hope of reversing the trend. And a major gang-tracking initiative has made inroads in Kane County.
For two years data has been fed into a computer program at the DuPage sheriff’s office to log the idiosyncrasies of career criminals and their crimes. Eventually, the department hopes to broaden its information base to include data from municipal police departments.
Authorities plan to use this Comprehensive Crime Reduction Program to predict where the criminals will go next and assign surveillance teams to catch them before they strike.
“It represents the new dimension in law-enforcement: Shoe-leather, a computer program and good, old-fashioned police work,” DuPage’s Sheriff Zaruba said.
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For more information on:
– The Suburban Law Enforcement Academy at the College of DuPage, call Randy James at 630-942-2190, or Bill Troller, the College of DuPage News Bureau coordinator, at 630-942-2480, or visit the Web site at http://www.cod.edu.
– Naperville Police Department’s Internet Crime Unit, call Mike Sullivan at 630-420-4165, or refer to the Police Department’s Internet safety site at www.microsoft.com/safekids.
