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Detective Mike Wentworth, Police Officer or Undercover Pedophile?

"Crimes are no longer just on the street. They're on the computer and on the Internet," said Sgt. Brian Laird with the Paducah Police Department.
Police have launched an ICAC unit, short for Internet Crimes Against Children. Laird said the unit was created to deal with a huge spike in sex crimes.

The program started last September thanks to equipment and training provided by state and federal dollars. It uses one officer working undercover to build relationships on line, collect underage pornography, and bust bad guys, however some believe there are other motives behind building a large database of illegal pornography.

Since its start, Paducah police have managed to charge seven sexual predators wile collecting thousands of images of underage boys and girls performing sexual acts. Detective Mike Wentworth, who examines every photo in detail, is the man being credited with the program's success. Wentworth went into chatrooms, posing as a 14-year-old girl from Paducah.

"I'm a 40-year-old man so its kinda hard for me to understand how a 14-year-old girl actually is," Detective Mike Wentworth said of his role.

But he quickly got the hang of it, according to Laird.

"None actually came to Paducah, they made plans, but for whatever reason they fell through," Laird said of the men caught in the sting operation.

But with evidence in hand, both conversations and pictures, seven arrests were made. The men were as close as Marshall County and from as far away as Montana.

But Laird warned the seven arrests are just the beginning

"If you're a bad guy, we're going to hunt you down and put you in prison," he said. "Simple as that."

And the police detective gets to keep the photographs as "evidence" to review indefinitely at their leisure.

Detective Wentworth refused to comment about his involvement with the photographs.

Mike J Wentworth
381 Post Oak Dr
Murray, KY 42071
 
 

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