The Innocent Org's Fight Against Predators Operating in Plain Sight

In this episode, I sit down with Nate Lewis, CEO of The Innocent, and his team to expose the hard truth about child exploitation and how law enforcement is taking the fight to the front lines. Every second counts. 💔

🚨 The truth you NEED to know:

• 1 in 5 children are targeted online by predators.
• 360,000 children will suffer abuse in the U.S. this year.
• The Innocent is training officers nationwide to hunt down predators before they strike.
• Law enforcement’s mental and physical health struggles in this fight.
• The dangerous push to normalize harmful behaviors.

👮‍♂️ How YOU can help:
✅ Spread awareness—your voice matters.
✅ Learn how to protect your kids online from hidden threats.
✅ Support The Innocent in their mission to defend our children.

🎯 This is a fight for our future. Stand with us.

🔗 Learn more & support The Innocent: Innocent.org
📢 Follow The Innocent: @TheInnocentUSA

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to The Innocent Organization
• 7:26 Training Law Enforcement for Child Protection
• 16:45 Understanding Online Child Exploitation
• 29:32 Mental Health for Investigators
• 47:00 The Reality of Predators: Not Who You Think
• 55:10 Digital Predator Tactics and Public Awareness
• 1:05:25 Practical Tips for Parents to Protect Children

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

Welcome back to the Rogue Nation podcast. This is the greatest podcast to ever be recorded and this is definitely the best episode that I've recorded to date. I know I say that often. However, this time, I'm super, super serious about it. So, with that said, this might be the most important issue that I have recorded about and with a team of great dudes. Right, theinnocentorg is who I recorded with.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Nate Lewis is the, I think, president, ceo. I'm going to let him tell you about the company here in a second so I don't screw up the mission and the objectives and that kind of stuff, but we had a great conversation and, yeah, it's all about learning how to investigate and prevent child exploitation, predators online and preserving the innocence of children. Theinnocentorg you can find them at theinnocentusa on Instagram and, like I said, their mission is incredibly important and, as cops, protectors, leaders of our families, parents, this is a very critical, pressing issue that's uncomfortable to talk about. We talked about that too. How do you navigate all of these things with your kids, your families? How do you navigate these investigations as a law enforcement officer and be able to deal with it without killing yourself? These are all really, really important questions, very uncomfortable questions, but it was a great conversation and I strongly recommend you check it out, stay for the whole thing and enjoy the show. All good, thanks for jumping on. I appreciate it, man. So what's your? You guys are in Texas today, yes, sir.

Speaker 2: 2:08

Who are you guys training with?

Speaker 1: 2:09

These guys tell you who we're training with. We're going up to Bellmead, just north of Waco, like basically borders Waco. We got five, yeah, four or five agencies, four or five agencies from that area, oh cool. So how many do you train at a time? Typically 10 to 20.

Speaker 1: 2:28

This class there's 12. Let's kind of start there. I was thinking like, all right, what's the best way to start this off with all of you? And I think it's like let's just start with kind of what you do, what your primary mission is, and like what you're going to be doing roughly in this training that you're doing today. Let's just talk about that is and like what you're going to be doing roughly in this training that you're doing today.

Speaker 2: 2:46

Let's just talk about that Cool. Our mission is to protect and preserve the innocence of children here in the United States One. We're a hundred percent focused in the United States. What do we do? I'll let these guys get into what that is, but the basic is that we're training and equipping law enforcement for specific crimes and it's funded by the communities inside the United States to really just build safer communities for children, enabling the communities to come together but also bringing law enforcement together, so bringing several departments together inside of a community to prioritize children.

Speaker 1: 3:20

Cool. So what is the training focused on? Do you have one type of one course that you teach primarily, or is it like several different different things, like TAC, flow and stuff has like sniper schools and shield schools and stuff like that? Like, what do you guys offer, and with the goal being to provide training to all of law enforcement, or it's not just our training, so we can send guys to conferences or we can bring send guys to different ICAC training or stuff like that and just help fund that through the community? But then we also have our own, our own class as well, and our main one is the we call it a scaled operations course class as well, and our main one is the. We call it a scaled operations course and that's a. That's a course basically to when you're dealing with these types of investigations. You've got the guys that go to like online chat class, and then guys that are good at writing search warrants or guys that go to celebrate training so they can exploit digital evidence, and so you have all these different specialties. And you got your TAC guys that go to Celebrite training so they can exploit digital evidence, and so you have all these different specialties and you got your TAC guys that are good at vehicle takedowns and all that stuff. And then you got your interviews. You're going to interview school, but then what we find is you get done with those roles and responsibilities together to actually do an operation. And so the scaled operations course. There's two main concepts behind it. One is start to finish. How do we develop those leads and then ensure those suspects go to prison for a long time by building a good case. And so it puts all those things together. And then the other part of that is the.

Speaker 1: 5:11

What was I going to say? The scaled operations course is a help me out here, guys. I had two thoughts there and I just lost that one, so it'll come back to me here in a second. Yeah, it's scalable, that's what it is Scaled. Scaled it's right in the word. So scale. The other part of it is it's scaled. So I work at an agency and I've got three detectives and me. That's it.

Speaker 1: 5:34

And some would say that's not enough to do an operation. That's not a good thing for the kids in that community. It's not to do something because you don't have enough people. And then you've got other big agencies that have the budget. They can bring in 20 investigators and run a full scale operation over the course of two or three nights. So I do the scaled operations courses.

Speaker 1: 5:57

Regardless if you have a big unit or a small unit, you can scale the operation to just be able to do something and still proactively combat this issue and build proactive cases, regardless of what the manpower of the budget is.

Speaker 1: 6:12

So we'll teach them how to, based off their resources, scale the operation up or down so they can go out and do work. Yeah, that makes sense because there's so much variation within departments and agencies to where it's like all right, we got a smaller department, you're going to take all your street level investigations all the way through versus I work in a 500 man department. We just we piece that out. So it's like all right, if I catch a felony, I pass it to the detective and I go back into service and I start shagging more runs for the next thing, and so this allows both types. So if you have a bunch of pieces, you know how to put the puzzle together, and then, if you don't have the pieces, you know how to work it without all the pieces, right? So you know how to just put it together yourself and scale it, based on what you're able to, based on your availability. Does that sound?

Speaker 3: 6:58

accurate, and the cool thing is that the vast majority of law enforcement in America is way smaller than a 500 man department. Yeah, over 92%, or something like that, have like less than 50 cops in that agency. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, big scale operations are very manpower intensive and they're really expensive as well, and so you might be able to do one every few years If you can get all of the agencies to come together at the same time at the same place with all the same equipment.

Speaker 3: 7:27

We've been part of those investigations and they're great because you make a pretty great impact for that region. However, it's not sustainable to do consistently and, yeah, for several years, like brian said, those. The kids in those communities aren't getting that type of attention, and so if we could show an agency how to do it, or a group of agencies with a handful of detectives or officers, we can show them how to do it with eight guys, 10 guys, and you can grab a couple from surrounding agencies, they can, without trying to overfish that hole, you can do it quarterly even, or a couple of times a year and still be consistently and sustainably impactful in that area.

Speaker 1: 8:03

So what types of investigations? I feel like we're kind of like skipping a piece or assuming some things Treat me like I'm an absolute idiot when it comes to this, because I am, and this is part of the reason I was so excited to talk to you guys. It's like my background is I did two, three years in narcotics. I did four or five years in the gang unit. I've been on our SWAT team for 15 years I think now. So it's always like chasing drug dealers, doing that thing. But when it comes to like sex crimes and stuff, I don't know a lot. It's not that I'm not interested, it's just like this other stuff was way more interesting to me and now, with the more popularity of oh, what sound of freedom comes out and like all that kind of stuff. So now it's like sex crimes and child sex trafficking. It's much more in the public eye, which I think is amazing because we need to shed light on this stuff, because it's uncomfortable to look at. Public needs to look at it. So give me an example like one or two, I guess. Yeah, one or two of the most popular types are the biggest thing that you guys see as far as investigations like kinds of investigation? Sure, so it's gonna.

Speaker 1: 9:05

Obviously it'll depend on where you're working, but with the movie sound of freedom that came out, which was fantastic for awareness and super powerful, and it got a lot about a lot of people thinking about the subject, we have to be careful not to just focus on the on human trafficking or sex trafficking, because a lot of other crimes against children sometimes gets overshadowed by that when we're focused on sex trafficking, which absolutely is a problem and happens way more often than folks think. But we also tend to forget about the children online being exploited by predators on social media or just sex crimes against children in general, and so we want to cover all of that and not just pigeonhole ourself into one specific area, and so that's why the mission of the innocent is to protect and preserve the innocence of children, just regardless whether that's them being victimized through sex trafficking, them being victimized online through sextortion or through actually being groomed online, whether that is just an online relationship or it actually proceeds to a hands-on offense. All of that and so does that yeah that kind of makes sense.

Speaker 1: 10:34

So our the goal is because we go around to even before the organization was started. We go, we hear from the community of, hey, what can we do about this, especially after that movie came out? What can I do? People want to feel like they're contributing or to to some change in this area and they're doing something to fix it, and it was like we don't really have an answer for them and there's only so many times you can say just spread awareness, spread awareness like that movie spread a lot of awareness. Right, doesn't put people in prison necessarily, like sometimes it does if we're aware and we can see signs and stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 11:12

But at the end of the day you got to build some cases and put some handcuffs on some bad guys to make the community safer. And that nate and I were actually on a, on a panel, and one of the lady in the audience was like what can we do? And then, nate, he basically said hey, these guys need equipment and training to do this stuff. How about you guys fund it? I'll make sure that they get the money. That agency gets the money and they'll get to work. Make sure that they get the money. That agency gets the money and they'll get to work, and so that's where the concept of the innocent was born. And then from there the whole idea is like we take donations from the people who want to empower their police and equip them and train them so that they can go out and actually do this work, and it's for a specific crime, so it's through like a grant.

Speaker 2: 12:01

There are some reporting and things that we request, and so it's specifically for child sex crimes. It's not for some of the equipment and some of the software can be used for other crimes, which is just going to happen, but we do want to focus specific on sex crime so it gives the community a real, specific area to put their dollars to work. It's not just for oh, let's donate money to the police and it's going to filter gas.

Speaker 1: 12:24

Right by those swaps, by the nods that they've been waiting for. Those are important. We need those. We need the quads. Everybody needs a quad. Yeah, no, it's very important to be super specific so you can't get earmarked to other things. Then all of a sudden, yeah, it's in the general fund and then all of a sudden, all of our chiefs are getting raises and we still don't have any investigative tools. Yeah, so so would you say, the top style of investigation that you guys deal with is like online to catch a predator type stuff. Is that fair, or is it?

Speaker 3: 12:57

That's probably the easiest way to describe it, because people are so familiar with that concept.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Yeah.

Speaker 3: 13:02

I think that's how we shoot it out to people Like, hey, this is the low hanging fruit to get people their brain wrapped around what we do. Obviously there's operational security aspect to it, so we don't get too deep into the weeds about how we do it. That's the best way for us to describe it, so people can get a handle on how we approach.

Speaker 1: 13:20

And it's also like when you train, like before you understand how to do the high-risk traffic stop right, you got to understand how to do the traffic stop, and so it's a good foundation to start with If we can go out and train them how to do those online exploitation operations, like they can be complicated, but they're also they're less complicated than, let's say, a human sex trafficking of a minor recovery operation where now you've got more people involved, you've got like aftercare stuff going on, you've got a surveillance team to deal with the trafficker, and then the follow up is just adds another layer of complexity, and so it's a good way to start a unit that just has, basically, or a unit or group of investigators that don't have a whole lot of experience in this area. So we start small and then eventually they can get more specialized training to work up to those other trainings, and that's that really is specific to where they're working too. Yeah, that makes sense. Now would it be. Tell me if I'm way off base here, but it sounds to me like I remember when I started in narcotics as a UC. It was all street level stuff. It would be like all right, first thing we're doing is like you go, put some motor oil all over you Like you've been working on a car and start cruising up and down Broadway and pick up some prostitutes. And then we'd pick up those prostitutes, get the prop, flip them into buys and do that like immediately.

Speaker 1: 14:44

Is there any type of that where it's like you do these online solicitation investigations and then is there a chain and a hierarchy that you can start climbing, or is it just kind of like you just do this and then that's it? So I'd say less. We do the same thing. By the way, I used to work over on the west side of the state I live in and we do the same thing, running the highway, running the track, and then we realized like kept picking up the same gals and I was like, well, who's out here? You realize pimps across the street watching the whole thing, right, and so it's taking one layer further. You climb that ladder or just treat them like humans and they may talk to you Like and we end up getting statements and then work in the trafficking charges there and then you'd climb that hierarchy right. Same thing with online trafficking cases. We go online, we'd make a phone call and then do a recovery op, get a statement from the victim and then work up to the trafficker the network of traffickers that are there them and then work up to the trafficker the network of traffickers that are there. When it comes to online, the online exploitation, that's a possibility, because we never know who's on the other end of that phone or who's going to show up and what their network is. So there's a possibility of climbing that ladder, so to speak.

Speaker 1: 15:58

But I think, instead of thinking of it like a hierarchy where you're climbing to the crime boss, you're fighting your way to the crime boss on the 16th floor. I think what you're doing is you're exposing a network and one of the things we talk about in our classes. You get that arrest and they go to first appearance. Like your case isn't over. That's actually when it's just beginning, because once you get those phones dumped and you exploit that digital evidence, once you get those phones dumped and you exploit that digital evidence, like that's when you're going to potentially uncover that network where these guys are talking to each other and now you have a list of more suspects or, unfortunately, that's when you're finding more victims of who this person had been talking to.

Speaker 1: 16:43

So it's not necessarily climbing the ladder up. It's exposing that network of potential co-conspirators or, but also then the network of victims, unfortunately, that are out there too, that they were all they were communicating with. Yeah, that makes sense. So it's less like double dragging and more more like you're like you're kicking the door and then you get exposed to this ecosystem of bullshit and then it's like all right now, what do we do with all this information? Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 17:10

Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 1: 17:11

So I don't know, I don't have too many more right now anyway, in like investigative questions, but like from a just like a feeling and I know we mentioned already hey, this is the sound of freedom movie was really good for exposure and and it gets people emotionally fired up.

Speaker 1: 17:29

I don't, but like I found myself like 30, 40 minutes prior to jumping on I don't really there was some part of me that was like man, I should just cancel this, I really am not in the mood to talk about, and I was like why am I feeling like this?

Speaker 1: 17:41

Cause I usually am all fired up about doing these, I like having conversations and meeting people and I was like it is a hundred percent because this shit is uncomfortable to talk about and it is. It is very, it's very raw and I think that's like important to to fight through and to do it anyway and that's why my hat's off to you guys for doing it. Because, like, from a societal standpoint, like I will say this until the day I die, right, people talk about different things like, oh, like Black Lives Matter, and all these different things are like lives matter. These lives matter. These lives matter right, until we honestly value the most vulnerable in our society, which is kids, that no lives will matter until this is dealt with and this is exposed, and so my hat's off to you guys for doing it, because it is so difficult and uncomfortable to talk about.

Speaker 2: 18:34

It is. So I get asked this all the time and people bring this up all the time and how do you do it? I can't even listen to this. How do you talk about this and how do you do this all the time? And it is difficult. I'm not going to take it away from the fact, even for you, that it's difficult. These are difficult conversations.

Speaker 2: 18:52

As we talked before, some of the most difficult experiences for first responders across the board are when it deals with children, and so we all most of us have a special place for children, and so this is really why our mission statement is to protect those children. That's really what we do. But I think that what you have to wear is not just having a difficult conversation, because most of the time, we know that doing difficult things usually is worth it and it's important, and it's harder Trust me, it's harder for a child to experience it and to recover from it and heal from it than it is to talk about it, and I think that we have to, as a society, start making it more common to talk about even though it is difficult, because change doesn't help or happen by us just sitting on the sidelines not talking about it. Once we start making a real voice and start demanding, even inside law enforcement. Hey boss, let's prioritize this because it really becomes a priority, priority in conversation, priority in your actions. I think that when you start prioritizing this as a community and people start taking a stance, even with their city council and at whatever levels they can, asking for training If you're a nurse in the ER just start talking about it and then it can slowly continue to progress and grow and change can actually happen and impacts can be made.

Speaker 2: 20:19

Because look, if these guys didn't talk about it at their department and demand it to happen, I don't know. I don't know. Re, I don't know. Reactive happens, but I'm talking about proactive. Let's be a proactive unit and have proactive teams that go out and do this and that starts with a conversation. Usually it's like even you like right now having this conversation. It's hard. We know that there's going to be energies and stuff out there that are going to want to stop us from doing good against evil, and that's sometimes what comes into is it's just this force that just doesn't want you to talk about it, it doesn't want you to come after it because it's evil. So it is hard, man, you're right, it is hard, but again, that's you. Work through that. I commend you for doing what's hard and it'll get easier, trust me. The more you have these conversations, the easier it gets too.

Speaker 1: 21:07

Yeah, you talk about investigations and things that stick with cops and I don't know.

Speaker 1: 21:12

I'm sure your guys' experience is the same as mine.

Speaker 1: 21:14

I don't know how many dead people I can see from gang violence and it's not that big a deal, honestly, it's part of the cost of doing business.

Speaker 1: 21:25

But seeing dead kids and traumatized kids and there was a the hostage rescue that I was on years ago we had to I was first through the door as the dad was trying to stab the four-year-old and it was like that those are the things that that stay with you and it's like when adults like terrorize children, like that is that's terrible when it sticks with you as a cop. So I guess, to play off that what I know we mentioned, not to segue too far, jumping around, but like we mentioned on the phone, do you guys have anything that you do for like your own mental health going through these investigations? Because, man, if you aren't proactive about your own sanity and your physical health and your mental health like this is going to be a very short career and on the backside of it you're going to get a whole lot of police suicides, I feel like these guys answer, but I'll just say that from my experience, everyone has their own way of dealing with things and so you have to figure out what works for you.

Speaker 2: 22:16

One thing that works for me works might not work for somebody else, and so I find a way for me to just reset myself, try to stay physically as healthy, putting in the best fuel, staying physically on point, but also mentally, spiritually. That's just how I deal with it. A lot of people just do exercise but don't worry about what they consume and put in their body. But there's a lot of tools out there and I'm sure you're aware of and there's people talk about therapy, emdrdr, certain things like that, and they've helped in certain areas. But for me, I just put on protection every morning. Man, I have a deep spiritual belief of just hey, I got a reset and get protected here, and that's how I. That's a lot of how I do it, and a lot of people meditate or whatever it may be.

Speaker 2: 22:58

But you have to clear that out and have Good team members that you all can talk and be around, spend time, designate time to spend with your boys and just let some things out, but to think that it doesn't affect you, even with all these things that you continue to do and I'll let them jump in too but it affects you. It's hard, especially when you're consumed by it and when you're thinking about it, talking about it all the time. It can weigh on you, but we all have ways to just compartmentalize and do certain things that can help, and you're just aware of it. I think being aware of it is the first thing is how it's affecting you.

Speaker 1: 23:34

I think the three pillars right Mental, physical, spiritual and so I think the way that you combat that is you prepare all those before you have to endure that trauma or endure that case or whatever it is. So if you have that stuff squared away, you're going to be able to rely on what you already practice or what you already do in order to get you through that. And so if you have all these external stressors, you're unhealthy, you don't work out, you eat like crap and it's like physiologically you're not set up for this. And then spiritually you're lost, you don't know, you don't have a foundation, something to rely on. And then mentally you already got trauma from other cases we all do, and that hasn't been dealt with. And then mentally your head's not in it because the marriage isn't strong, Relationships are aren't as good as they should be.

Speaker 1: 24:39

And then you go in and you work a case like this, like you're already on that tipping point, Right, and then so you do a case like this and it pushes you over on that tipping point Right. And then so you do a case like this and it pushes you over. So I think by having all that other stuff, at least not everything's perfect, I get it, but you can at least have those habits and work on that stuff before you have to endure that trauma. You're further away from that edge. Does that make sense? So it makes total sense. It gives you a little bit of a grace period so you can get your crap together before you go off the deep end.

Speaker 3: 25:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It pops two things up for me. Number one preventative maintenance is always better than going and having to fix a problem when it's actually a problem. Now, I know some of the best marriages that I recognize in my life are people that have gone to marriage counseling for no other reason than just to maintain a healthy marriage long term. Yeah, we don't really have a lot to talk about a lot of times, but the professional will bring things up for us to discuss or for us to think through, and that has prevented us and given us handles when problems do come up, to be informed or to have language to talk through and deal with the problem, because now we're aware of the things that we can address. So, preventative maintenance.

Speaker 3: 25:52

And then the other thing is just the idea we were just having this conversation the other night how we have at our age me and these guys have a foot in both camps of the idea of, like old school, when we went through the military, going and getting therapy. Was that is the taboo thing, right? Johnson's crazy and we don't want him back at it. Is he really fit for duty? Who wants to give him a gun? I'm saying, if he's getting therapy, like what's really where he's at and should we let him be back out on the street or whatever, whatever it is, but we have too much back out on the street or whatever, whatever it is, but we have too much.

Speaker 3: 26:27

We have too many solid dudes nowadays that are talking about the benefits of going and getting help to ignore it and it's just going to take people that the community respects, whether it's law enforcement or military, whatever that community is looking up to a respectful person that is going yeah, there's nothing wrong with it and it almost gives the rest of us permission to be part of it.

Speaker 3: 26:46

And so courageous people that have a good reputation saying, yeah, this is absolutely what I do. So it's an interesting time within law enforcement to be like. I grew up in a community that therapy was a taboo thing and now we're like we have. And then there's also plant medicine and all the other stuff. There's a we are opening the floodgates now for all these different options for us and the next generation of law enforcement guys. We're hopefully the idea is going to be like man, we have all these options. Why it would be weird to think that there would be people looking at us negatively for pursuing the beneficial treatment. So that's, I think that's what we're hoping to get, and that's just going to take guys like us to be courageous and say, yeah, of course we're doing these things, why wouldn't we?

Speaker 1: 27:31

Yeah, absolutely so that that that triggered a couple of things for me. I'm going to work backwards to your points here in a second. But as we talk about therapy for law enforcement and going through that and the way that I see it this is my personal opinion is that, like it has to be viewed as strength training, like mental strength training. Like it has to be viewed like that Less like therapy and more like strength training. Right, resistance training, like we've gone through all this stuff and we got to go through and get physical therapy. Like I blew my shoulder out or I just had neck surgery, so now I got to go to PT for that, right, mental health is the same way. So, where we need to caution ourselves, because we need both. We need both the toughness of the old school with the awareness of today. Right, if we don't remember to be tough, because there is a time when we just have to suck it up right, we can all agree on that. Right, as men, sometimes you just got to put your nose to the grindstone and go and compartmentalize and deal with it, and if we forget about that, what's going to develop is the same thing that we're seeing in society is bad therapy and we're going to get therapy for everything and it's going to be so over the top the other way that it's going to be too hard of a shift. Now that's just my opinion and we can see trends and we're seeing a trend now of bad therapy with all kinds of stuff for trauma responses that are not really like your dad yelled at you. That's normal. That's not a trauma response. So we don't want to go too far the other way and we're already seeing my personal experience again like we're seeing a softness to law enforcement that's going to be equally as detrimental. And to kind of speak on your points with the first thing you said is like pre-framing. You both kind of mentioned it.

Speaker 1: 29:06

Pre-framing is something that I talk about a lot with people like new cops. Like you are going into a profession that you are going to see death and destruction and evil, like you are not going to avoid it. It's not an if, it's a when You're going to get into a fight with somebody and it's going to be super scary. And you're going to get into a fight with somebody and it's going to be super scary and you're going to carry stuff with you forever because of that physical issue that you dealt with, where somebody was trying to hurt you, right, and and maybe you have to shoot somebody, maybe you have to kill somebody. These are all. These are not ifs, these are wins, right, like I, I always tell, like the recruits when I get to talk to them about officer involved shootings, like I've been involved in a couple and I've been on scene for 12 or 15 total it's going to happen. You will see these things.

Speaker 1: 29:48

So pre-framing it in a way where you're like an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So making sure that you have appropriate expectations that everything is in line, because the biggest issue with PTSD, or one of the biggest issues, is that when your worldview is shattered and this is again why these issues are so important to deal with for kids and why innocence is so important to protect is that the backend of having your worldview shattered is so detrimental. So if you go into law enforcement and you continue to work through this with an appropriate frame, then when you are exposed to the evil or the fight or the whatever, like you expected it so it doesn't blow up your worldview, and then it's like picking up the pieces is so difficult on the back end. So and that's what pisses me off, as a side note like this is totally unrelated, but I'm just going to say it is that the recruiting that that most departments are doing shows social media and fun stuff and shop of a cop and coffee with a like in TikTok stuff, and it's that's not. That is not the job, that is like a fraction of the job. The job is this man. It's the dirty, nasty stuff and it's painful, but we're choosing to be a filter for society.

Speaker 1: 30:56

Why did you become a cop? You become a cop. See, like you, you can honestly go to those community events. Did you go? You become a cop so you can hit the streets and go find bad people and put them in jail, put them in prison. Yes, that's why we become a cop, and so that's actually also speaks to the reward. Part of it is like the reward of being in the trenches online chatting or just dealing with these types of cases. Or just dealing with these types of cases. The reward is man, that guy got put in prison for 10 years, or it's Washington two years, but at the end of the day, that's two years. No child's going to be victimized by that person, so that's a reward and for me, having those rewards, that's why I, and for me having having those rewards like, that's why we like, why I became a cop, so I could do something about the evil that's out there and here you got a chance to do it. Is it going to mean you're going to have some vicarious trauma getting there? Yes, but patrol guys deal with that same thing when they respond to a bad call too. Right, so it's part of the job and I think it's important.

Speaker 1: 32:09

I just had a random thought. We talked about how we can take care of ourselves and get ready for all this, prepare ourselves for these types of cases. It's man, it. I guess my message is like speaking to police leadership is like these guys at the line level are dealing with enough stress in their job, like with the stuff they have to see. Be a leader, take care of your people and I don't mean take care of them by buying them a pen with their name on it or getting a squad of pizza party talking about. Make it easy to do their job, support them, tell the truth, show the community the good work they're actually doing, the hard work they're doing, the sacrifices they're making, and by reducing that overall stress within the station house. That's going to make it easier for them to do their job, because they're going to be able to endure more stress or endure that hard stress from the actual casework and they, yeah. So just feel like that's on my mind today, so I feel like I have to say that, yeah, leadership for this is so important.

Speaker 1: 33:19

If you lose sight of, if your leaders let you lose sight of the mission, so that to me is like the primary objective of leader in law enforcement is remind people what their mission is and just how you want it done, and then let them go work. And then, if you continue to do that and reinforce that positively and take away, like you said, take away as many external stressors as you can for them to do that job effectively, then everybody tends to win a little bit. More often, it's when it's when, all of a sudden, like instead of taking stressors away, they're adding more stressors and the term shit rolls downhill, that that slows the mission, if not derails it. Exactly, yep, so let's. I want to, I want to touch base.

Speaker 1: 34:05

I know, nate, with your podcast you did on uh, on Kalers, you talked about the difference of the populations that you find offending with this and it's wild, so it's very broad and I want to let you talk about, like the different populations that you see in these investigations. And is it surprising? Was it like when you were exposed to the broad spectrum of people involved in the child exploitation? Did it just blow your mind? Did you have something that was like, oh, I only expected this, or this?

Speaker 2: 34:43

only expected this or this and then all of a sudden it was not that. I think that as humans, we have this idea of how we can profile the drug dealer with the backpack at the park or whatever. Your mind judges people on how they're dressed or how they look, and so we put in from movies, maybe television, we know what a criminal looks like. But I think it's not that this didn't really blow my mind, but it is surprising. I'll tell you what did blow my mind in a second. But is this addiction to sex and this preference, so to speak, of attraction is not immune to any level of humanity, right? You're talking from teachers to preachers, to Democrats, republicans it doesn't matter who it is and where it is and it's actually more often than not that we hear I can't believe it was that guy, because it's a closet hidden thing that they're hiding from their family, from their community, from their coworkers, whether it's a doctor with a voyeur camera or whatever it may be. These are people who have intelligence at a high level, super successful in society's eyes, in nice homes, drive nice cars, so that I mean that doesn't necessarily blow my mind, but it is. Wow, this is a crime that's happening amongst even at the highest level of success. I think what blows my mind and what blew my mind in this type of work coming from folks in international, where it's actually going undercover into brothels and sex clubs and that type of thing, and working online in communities in America, which is super first world it was when we started doing some of these investigations with you guys in my hometown. Hey, we're going to put out this is how we do these investigations and how many guys do you think are going to respond? And it's a pretty small town, what 50,000 people or something. And I was like, oh, I'm sure we'll get 12, at least 12 predators who are going to hit us up for this because it was a specific site. And at least 12 predators were going to hit us up for this because it was a specific site. And how many people know about this? I think it was in 24 hours. We had 55 unique numbers that first time and I was thinking that blew my mind. There's that many people wanting to reach out to a child? And then it was later, even in that year, but I think this still blows people's minds in that small town.

Speaker 2: 36:58

We did do one of these larger scale operations we were able to be part of. He was on and we were all just sitting there watching this thing play out. But no matter of 54 hours, 13 arrests were made and that was actually like we probably could have kept going in this small town. And so those are the things that it's not as shocking anymore, because once you start seeing, you're like man, like even when we were at some training doing certain things, and you're like, wow, this is even bigger than I thought it was.

Speaker 2: 37:28

That's what I think is mind blowing to me is, wow, it really is much bigger than I even thought that it was and I knew it was a problem. That's obviously why we started this organization organization, but I just didn't really understand. And then you deep dive into all these other things and some of the statistics of like sexual predators, looking in your community, and then out of those operations, 350 arrests. Only like three percent of those are sex offenders, and so now you're thinking of the scope of man, how many predators are actually out there. They're everywhere, and that I think what's more mind-blowing is the number of people and how often you could be doing these investigations constantly, just constantly.

Speaker 3: 38:08

That's what's mind-blowing to me and the idea of predator and how we define that. I think too is we're having to rather kind of reframe how we define it, because we think, to your point, you have this idea of what a child predator would look like, of those arrests that we've made. Man, you pulled the dude's phones out of their pockets and it's a picture of their family and they're like a local position of trust in the community, a coach or whatever. And then you have people that maybe you would expect to show up but we have to put because of the nature of the investigation of why they're there. And you look at all the chats. You have to put that label this dude's a predator. He might be the local dentist, but he is a predator, not what we expected. And so now we really have to just open our scope of what a predator is, and that really shines light onto what the problem is, because our brains are having to rewire, really what we're looking at. It's a surprising thing for me as well. An adjustment.

Speaker 1: 39:02

I guess guess, so to speak. Yeah, that's, you think about the dude with the chomo mustache and the black panel van, that's what you think about? And yeah, I think it's, and it started with the chris hansen dateline stuff. Oh my god, look at all of these people here. They're here to have sex with a 14 year old or whatever, and it's man. This is a very pervasive thing.

Speaker 2: 39:22

You know what's interesting about that, though that is interesting to me. Back then nobody was saying like, oh, this doesn't really happen. Now we're fighting against that. There's people saying, oh, this doesn't really happen, really doesn't really happen.

Speaker 1: 39:34

Who's saying that it doesn't happen?

Speaker 2: 39:37

Oh, have you not been on the media and watched and followed?

Speaker 1: 39:40

I know it's no, I've watched the news ever, but yeah.

Speaker 2: 39:43

Yeah and stuff. I can't tell you how many times I'll rip a statistic Now in videos. I have to actually put the source in the video now because if I say some sort of stat, I get completely attacked online about oh you're making up stats. And so now I have to, like, actually say the source in video because people will comment all the time Saying out there, oh, you're blowing this out of proportion.

Speaker 1: 40:04

Oh then that's my message back. It says we need your hard drive. Yeah, you're now being investigated. How's that feel?

Speaker 2: 40:11

Does this really exist? Is it really as bad as you're saying? And this madness, oh my gosh, if you only knew this. Because they don't know, they don't live in this world. And so to say, like before was like oh, that's because they don't know, they don't live in this world. And so to say, like before, it was like oh, that's the cool show Dateline with Chris Hansen, they're catching these predators. And now just to get so much backlash, really, guys, is it really a problem? Or you want my money, but is it really a problem?

Speaker 1: 40:35

and you're like wow, and not to get too down the political rabbit hole, because I really like don't want to get like completely shadow banned for this, but just to go ahead and say it. This has been, it's starting to and I think has been successfully attached to Black Lives Matter, lgbtq, we had plus, and now you got like minor attracted persons and stuff like that. That's like trying to attach itself to this long string of political activists right to try to gain more freedoms and rights for just this attraction. It's just this attraction. So trying to downplay it as an actual crime and evil, like I think that's probably part of it is it's starting to align itself politically and then everything is so polarized today that it's like you're either in one camp with everything or the other camp with everything, and it's so. If this lands inside of a camp, then all of those people have to be okay with it or they're going to get socially ostracized from their group, and that's worse than anything nowadays. So I don't have a group anymore and you look at a lot of this stuff with the trans movement and like the radical feminists and how those two things are completely opposite but yet they're all supporting each other and it's you get.

Speaker 1: 41:47

It doesn't make any sense from an ideological standpoint, but they have to be on the same page in order to have any political weight. Otherwise, they're statistically irrelevant, regardless of your worldview. We don't have to go. We don't have to define what that worldview is, but regardless of your worldview, we don't have to define what that worldview is, but regardless of your worldview.

Speaker 1: 42:03

If there's one thing all worldviews could unite on, or both sides of the aisle, it's like protecting and preserving the innocence of children. Is that something we can agree on, for one? And if your worldview doesn't support that, for one? And if your worldview doesn't support that, then I believe you truly are the an enemy of children. That that worldview is evil. Yeah, that's evil, and all children like we want to protect all kids, and yeah, it's unfortunate. Things do have to be politicized, but for some reason, you would think we all could agree on this one thing, but unfortunately it's not the case. Yeah, I think that's a great way to frame the argument, though, is like hey, listen, I really don't care what camp you want to land into, or is providing protection for the innocence of children something that you stand for, yes or no? And it's who's going to say no to that. No, don't. I'm sure they would play games with the definition of innocence and the definitions of these little words and stuff and how they would attack it for sure, that's how you attack.

Speaker 1: 43:09

You start to.

Speaker 2: 43:09

You start changing definitions or changing terms and also what we've seen is not just changing the definition of those things is they all should have a right? We I've seen there was, when you talk about minor attracted persons. There was a group of individuals in the Netherlands who even went to gay pride parades and were like, oh, we want to be accepted as people who just are attracted to children, and even they got ostracized. But here's the thing is that mentality is trying to breach into acceptance. You should accept me for how I was made. I am just attracted to that. That's how I was born and that's how it was, and that's not an acceptance. That's, to me, what I believe.

Speaker 2: 43:51

When you look at the science behind a child's brain and the development of a brain, we know it's beyond 18 when it's fully developed. And why are we supposed to protect our children? Because they can't make the best decisions for themselves under the age of 18, which is weird, that a light switch flips on it when they have their birthday. They can make those great decisions, so we have to protect them. And now they're trying to make.

Speaker 2: 44:13

People are saying that it should be younger. They're even saying that how would you take away the right to a child to have these intimate relationships I'm not going to get too graphic, but I could and on the ages of some of these people that they were talking about, because at what age does a human actually? Or a young boy, have an erection? And so why would you prevent them from having these encounters, that type of thing? And you're going. What in the world are people thinking? And they wanted that to be an accepted. Accept me, don't ostracize me. This is just how I was made and born this way, and I don't believe that. Honestly, I just don't.

Speaker 1: 44:52

Yeah, that that goes into the nature versus nurture conversation and and the whole minor attracted persons thing, like from. I heard that a few years back and I was like what in the hell is this? And I could be wrong. It's hard to find this for sure. But the way I understand it started is in rehabilitation. It's not that it was attached to be an accepted thing. It's like you get a child molester that is convicted and now what do we do with this person on the back end of their sentence? Right, because we know that the reoffending is huge, right, like as far as the recidivism rates and stuff like that. So how do we put them into therapy with an appropriate label for rehab? And it's a minor attracted person? This is a way better label for recovery.

Speaker 1: 45:35

Right On the back end, which I think that there is some understand. I on the backend, which I think that there is some understand, I understand that from my background as a master's in psychology. Like, I understand that you want to frame rehabilitation in a light that doesn't make you shameful. I get it. That is true. But when you start, like changing the overall label and say no, this dude is a child molester, this is what he has done. You can't change that from from the legal side, from those definitions. You start doing that and then it's a snowball cascade of acceptance of these evil acts. That's right. I don't know if you guys have ever heard the roots of that or if I'm completely off base, which is possible. No, it makes sense.

Speaker 2: 46:16

I've never heard that, but that's awesome that you shared that, because that actually makes sense. I thought it was just this made up thing like no, this is what it's used for that.

Speaker 1: 46:25

It starts as that and now it's a blanket like now it's using for everybody. And then saying that that's not just a classification for what you were talking about, but now it's a classification for a trait that people are born with, that they should naturally be able to express and engage in, is unacceptable. Yeah, you know what you could make the argument that being an antisocial serial killer is also something that I was born with, which is totally reasonable to state. The nature versus nurture. Like you may have been born with some wiring in your head, that's. I really enjoy killing things. I really enjoy it. Okay, now, is that a right of yours to express that need of no hell? No, it's not. That's ridiculous.

Speaker 3: 47:05

This is the same thing, but to maintain intellectual integrity you have to take both of them together, and the mental gymnastics it takes for people to get there, I think is hard for us to wrap our brains around.

Speaker 1: 47:16

Yeah, a lot of it comes from and I'm going to give people the benefit of the doubt here A lot of it comes from people that just want to see the best in everyone and they don't really understand that the evil that they have committed or want to commit, or are like they don't get it, they've never seen it, they won't expose themselves, they only like the back end of it where they can say, oh, you guys are just mean bullies. No, like we were actually exposing ourselves to both ends of it. You like you. You are picking the sanitary part of it and try to keep it clean and you don't want to see the dirt and the nasty in the evening, like the other part doesn't happen.

Speaker 1: 47:51

Yeah, and knocking at your door and and yeah, and then that's where those individuals would have a serious time hard time with the. If you showed them that and you're like, hey look, watch this video of this act Now, how do you feel? And it would destroy their worldview. It would be so horrible for them. They wouldn't be able to handle life.

Speaker 3: 48:12

They'd have to go into therapy honestly, and that's what we talked about we, one of the things that we deal with is trying to really toe that line from the awareness standpoint, without violating the innocence of the people that we're trying to educate. Yeah, and that takes some care. We, we did a presentation one time in chicago and one of the guys that was hosting it was like hey, I, I think that it's important that we really expose people to how dirty this gets, and we're like I don't know if, I don't know if we want to go show them how dirty, but we'll toe the line if that's what you want to do. And we had Nana in the front row, her hair blown back, and we're just like, oh man, we're not even, we're not even getting deep into this stuff and and her innocence was taken away. And this is now we're violating our own. Obviously she's not a child, but we're violating our own. Obviously she's not a child, but we're violating our own mission here by just trying to educate people.

Speaker 2: 49:02

So it's a fine line that we deal with as well yeah, and on the side of that one is she's like gasping, but then you have some younger guys being like, yeah, let's go show me more, let's go get these guys. And so it's a hard finesse. How do you finesse that? And then, in the same event, a 24 year old girl was there and, towards the end, says what's the most shocking thing to me? That you guys are shocked by this. I've lived this for the last 10 years on social media and so to her it wasn't even shocking, and that was shocking to me. You talk about mind blowing. I was like whoa, here's a 24 year old girl who said, yeah, since I was 14, I've had to deal with these guys messaging me on my social media and like I've had to. Just, it's just dealing with it.

Speaker 2: 49:45

People send you pictures or whatever it may be, and that's just normal to her as a teenager, but to the older generations, even us who didn't have phones growing up, we didn't grow up that way at 14. So it's whoa what that's your childhood?

Speaker 1: 49:58

she's yeah, that's my childhood that is that you know what I so that that goes right. I'm glad you brought that up. That goes right into one of my questions about as the father of teenagers right, high school kids. What can I do? Because, as much as we're talking about law enforcement response, our jobs are as proactive as we want to be. They are somewhat reactive, and I tell people this all the time and they don't like hearing it. But when seconds count, the police are only minutes away, and that's true. I hate to say it, but it's absolutely true. You call for help. It's going to be a delay, even for an active shooter two, three, four minutes at least. How many people can die in that time?

Speaker 1: 50:37

So, always being ready to take care of yourself, right, being responsible for yourself, that's a big thing that is missing in society. You can't outsource all of your safety to the cops, right? So how, as parents, can we take some of this ownership and what should we be doing to protect our kids? Yeah, man, how much time we got. So what? Here's a question. So, before you, you and your family go to bed, what, as a parent, what do you or your wife do to make sure you guys are safe for the night, like what's the first thing or what's like SOP in your household, what happens at night before everybody goes to bed? As far as security, lock the doors, shut the garage door, make sure the house is buttoned up yeah, yep, secure the hatches and that we do that to keep people from entering our home when we're asleep, at our most vulnerable time, when we're switched off. And so it's interesting, because that's a normal thing in society, especially now. Gone are the days where we don't lock our doors at night but we go through that security measure and then parents allow their child to go into their bedroom with their phone. No-transcript, that that that's just a household standard is like hey, you're gonna go to bed, you're going to bed and then keep the devices out of the bedroom because that's a direct gateway, that's direct access to the kids and no one would take an adult and invite them over and say go, hang out with my kid in their bedroom, shut the door, I'll see you in the morning. I hope it wouldn't. For the most part, that just doesn't happen, short of trafficking situations and some heinous criminals doing that, which does happen occasionally.

Speaker 1: 53:19

But be a hard target, right? Be in your kid's business. It's not your job to be their friend, it's your job to be their parent. And you hear sometimes, hey, check your kid's phone, install the parenting apps. There's a lot of apps that are out there that still allow your child to communicate with their friends and still do stuff online, but it puts filters in and puts barriers and it puts alert protocols in to the parents where they know if every picture you're taking has a chance that it's going to be sent to their parent, then like, maybe that's a deterrent and be a hard target.

Speaker 1: 53:53

That's my biggest advice the going back to what I was saying as far as, like, our job's not to be there. Our friend, our job is to be their parent. Like, I get it's a tough conversation and you might get some attitude from your teenager when you say, hey, you can't have that app or you can't have this social media or have your phone in your room, but at the end of the day, I'd rather have my child mad at me than a victim of sexual assault or being exploited online. Like they'll thank me later.

Speaker 2: 54:30

And I think that it goes back to one of your original questions too is or not questions but comments is like, hey man, I almost didn't do this because this is hard to talk about. It's hard to talk about but it's important to talk about because if your children's innocence and potentially some building block for their future decades is at risk, it's an important, difficult conversation to have and it's probably going to be uncomfortable. But first step is getting educated and then taking that education and having that relationship and conversation. But now here's the other thing is, I always say you have to start with a relationship, and these are difficult conversations to have with parents and teenagers around internet, social media, phones and that type of thing, and we didn't grow up with them. They're way more advanced than a lot of these technologies, depending upon their age, than even we are as we enter into the boomer age. But these are difficult conversations and I think they Hopefully it's not too late for you to have a real relationship with your children, because the relationship side is going to do a lot in creating that safe space for them to come and talk to you and then have these conversations like, hey, are there people? One is your social media account public so that anyone can access you and follow you and take your photos. And can they get into your DMs and start sending you photos of themselves to release some of that innocence onion? Oh, there's a couple layers. I just saw a grown man send me a photo and tell me to rate it. That's for them. I've seen a 50 year old man's private parts. So how are you avoiding that?

Speaker 2: 56:09

It's through conversations, because there's a lot of my own personal conversations with young girl who believes that this doesn't happen, that this is made up, it's a conspiracy, right that this happens, because she hasn't had to happen yet or she potentially has so much that I actually let's look at your 1 000 followers because you remember, their identity is related to how many friends and followers they have. So we need to have that conversation to build their confidence, not through their followers. And what does a real relationship look like with friends? So there's a lot of deep conversations to have. Like I said, how much time do you have to talk about this one? But you have to start putting it into reality for them and this is what worked for me is okay. Let's just start looking at some of these thousand followers that you have and, as a young girl, do you know this person? Click on their profile and start investigating into that person's profile and exposing who that person is.

Speaker 2: 57:04

She may have just got a friend request and went, accept, right, but what we see is these algorithms and some of these platforms are introducing grown adults to children, which is makes no sense to me, and don't tell me the technology it doesn't exist to avoid that. And then once you hit accept, they're going to send you five more and then you're going to accept those are going to send you 10 more, 100 more, and so they're just going to accept all these people and they may not interact with them. They don't even know all the people. When was the last time somebody a girl, a young girl who had a thousand followers went through that list? May, probably never, yeah, ever.

Speaker 2: 57:40

And here's the other thing is parents be a role model. They're going to monkey, see, monkey do. If you're on your social media all the time, you have a public account and you're trying to gain your followers too because of your sense of acceptance or whoever it is based off of your things and how many likes you're getting and all that stuff. They're going to do similar things. And here's the other thing is be careful that you're, even as a parent, that your account is not open, because if you're following somebody who has 1.3 million followers, you know what trolls do. Wow, that's a huge bucket for me. I can go to this guy's 1.3 million followers. You know what trolls do. Wow, that's a huge bucket for me. I can go to this guy's 1.3 million followers. I'm going to start scrolling his million followers and I'm going to see the lady on there. I'm going to click on her profile and look oh, she's so proud of her 10-year-old. She posts pictures of her in her bathing suit at a birthday party at the swimming pool.

Speaker 2: 58:28

I just got a bunch of pictures of 10-year-olds in their bikinis and they're gonna. They just hold their finger on those photos and they can take those photos. Now they can create accounts off of those. They can use those to deep face. Yeah, they can go into young boys and say hey, I'm ashley, I'm 12, I think you're cute, we should be friends, whatever. And he's built the profile. This now start sending me photos and then it now turns into send me 10 grand because I'm friends. I'm not ashley and I'm not. I am friends with your mom and all your other friends, and look at these photos that I have.

Speaker 2: 58:55

So there's so much that goes into this. This is why people are educating yourself and having these conversations and thank you for having this conversation to bring awareness to people. This is the reality of what's going on, and because we live in this, we know it, but you don't live in this Not you, meaning the people listening don't live in this, you don't know. So just start knowing what's going on. How do you protect yourself? I know it's a long answer to there's a hundred more things that you could potentially do, but I think those are the basics.

Speaker 2: 59:27

I love to keep the phone out of the door because kids are online so much, but when they're in public places, in school and stuff like that, that's not when the like dark stuff starts happening. It's when they're alone and no one's looking, and so that's a huge first key lock those accounts down. There's apps that you can get. Bark is one that we know are familiar with, or I am and there's more out there, and some of them cost money. But again, it's letting your child be a child with guardrails, and I use this analogy all time.

Speaker 2: 59:54

I don't know how old your children are, but when your daughter turns 16, before that even takes place, for a year they're practicing driving. They even have to go take an actual test, a physical online test and a physical driving test with an instructor. You've driven with them for hours. You buy them a safe car, make sure it has airbags and all that stuff to keep them safe on the road, right, but the reality is they have to have situational awareness. They have to know if the guy's going to run the red light. They have to know a lot of things to keep themselves safe. We put so much time into that because we're so deathly scared of our child getting behind the wheel of a car, but we're not even worried about them getting behind the phone. We have no trainings really. They're starting to develop and we're actually going to be talking about some of those here soon, but how do we put guardrails and seatbelts and airbags and training on our kids to navigate this digital world? That's not going anywhere anytime soon.

Speaker 2: 1:00:52

With the statistics of how much time is spent online and 37 million teens in the United States having social media accounts, that's just where they're going to go and we talk about this. I grew up. Hey, it was a creepy dude, like you said, in the van at the playground, right, guess what? There's video cameras at every playground. They're not going to go expose their identity. In every corner of the world is a camera. They're not going to do that. They're going to try to hide their identity and they're going to try to manipulate and groom you through, probably, social media or avenues, video games and that type of thing, until potentially, it does become a hands-on offense man. It's a big conversation. We're starting to scratch the surface of the depths of this. We're just getting past the pinnacle of the iceberg.

Speaker 1: 1:01:33

Yeah, there's a lot yeah, no, if you start really peeling back the layers of the depths of this.

Speaker 1: 1:01:35

We're just getting past the pinnacle of the iceberg. Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah, no, if you start really peeling back the layers of just social media and phone usage, you're going to peel back layers of how to deal with relationships and friends, how to deal with the boyfriend, girlfriend in more intimate relationships. What's appropriate communication with that? Physiologically, what's this phone doing to your sleep cycle when it sits next to your bed, which is something I'm guilty of. I use it as an alarm and all kinds of other stuff. And, like last night I woke up at 2 am and I was like, what's cryptocurrency doing? Like why am I doing this? Right, and it's horrible. Answer is horrible, but anyway.

Speaker 1: 1:02:09

So like it's, it's just going to expose so many different conversations and, honestly, as as a parent, it's that they grew up. I'm like the oldest possible millennial slash, like Gen X graduated in 2000, mid 40s. These are all conversations that I really don't feel like having because I'm not. It just seems annoying to me. Plus, if they look at my usage for my little business that I run in the podcast and stuff, it's public, it's open business that I run in the podcast and stuff, it's public, it's open and honestly, like the the amount of inappropriate contacts that I've gotten as a 43 year old man are mind blowing Since I started like pushing my accounts and trying to gain.

Speaker 1: 1:02:47

Like just market my services for as a fitness coach to cops, right, and I'm getting all kinds of hey, let me buy your underwear and let me do this, and let me like multiple, not just one. Like multiple and the faster. And, like you said, the algorithms are so strange and you can't figure them out. Like you have to go through and see those people and block them immediately and then, because if you don't, you'll get more and it'll keep coming, and that's what I found is you have to block this stuff right away. But if you don't, you'll get more and it'll keep coming, and that's what I found is you have to block this stuff right away. But if you don't know how to do that, and, honestly, if you've got some baggage as a high school kid or a middle school kid that doesn't have either parental attention or you've got some sort of like void in your self-esteem, like you are going to like that, regardless of the type of attention it is, that's right 100% yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:03:33

And regardless of the type of attention it is, that's right. A hundred percent yeah. And they know that. These predators know that they're vulnerable and they're going to go out to them. It's an easy one for them, they're going to. It's just like the wild prey and predator predators going to find the easy prey. Maybe they're handy, they're disabled, they're injured, whatever it may be. And that's exactly the same way, man. And that's exactly the same way man. They're going to go after easy targets and, like we said, hard target, that's critical. That's critical.

Speaker 2: 1:03:58

As a dad and as a leader, we try to protect one. We want to be a hard target and we want to make sure that. But we have to instill those into our children and be like you need to be a hard target child, be a hard child, and that takes a lot of things. And that takes a lot of things and that also you used a great thing that I always say, and it doesn't matter if you're married or divorced as a father, you have to give your daughter attention. She's seeking attention In those ages.

Speaker 2: 1:04:21

There's this age in life we all know and these young girls look up to their dad. That's daddy's girl, right, and they need some attention from that opposite sex and if you're not giving them certain attention, it's same with our wives. We all know that you have to give them these things that we're not naturally good at doing as males, but you have to do that to your daughter too, because your daughter's going to seek it and you better pray to God that she's seeking it from the right male who has a father, role model figure in their life that's going to treat her the way you hope she's going to be treated. But treat her and be the example of the guy she should be looking for and give her that attention. Those are small things Again. There's a hundred things we could talk about around this source right here, information, and those are just a few and we could do a whole hour on it.

Speaker 1: 1:05:10

Honestly, and I think if you guys don't have a civilian product, like as far as a coaching course, like dude, that would be as, aside from being a cop, like I'd pay for that right now, if you had a parenting course on how to safeguard your kids, like that would be a hundred percent, like I'd be all in on that right now.

Speaker 2: 1:05:29

This second, so stay tuned, follow us or get on our email. I've been working with this woman. She's been developing a really great education for about four years and she's about to launch it, and so I will put that will be linked on our website and stuff for four. This is just for civilians. This is for teachers, parents, children and counselors, whatever it may be, and it's it does cost money. It's not a lot of money, but you also have access for a year to go back in and do these modules and it's interactive and it's pretty cool. So there is that stuff coming.

Speaker 2: 1:06:00

I think there'll be more coming in the future. I know there's a few things that exist. This is always ever changing and all the technologies are changing, so you have to stay up on this, but there'll be some more stuff. Right now, we're focused on law enforcement, but I do these a lot. I get on zoom podcasts. You've seen some of the things and I think we do events. Community events will come out. They're digital parenting nights, that type of thing, and it's important, and then, hopefully soon enough, through that education actually and this is actually the first time I've really announced that these guys don't even know it's going to be available for the community members to go become their community awareness person with that education, that they can go be a trainer in their community and train that education at events and they can do kind of like the candlelight thing, not representing us, but they can at least go into their community and start teaching some of this education to their communities, which is going to be super powerful.

Speaker 1: 1:06:58

Yeah, yeah, no. And then that's going to open up in this again like digital age, of having two teenagers and four cell phones in the house. A lot of times you look around and you're like what the hell's going on here? Like we haven't talked in person. I've gotten 16 memes from my son on Instagram and it's like he's sitting across the couch and then the only thing he says is dad, look at that. Dad, look what I sent you. Dad, look what I sent you. I'm like what Can you just get up and show it to me? No, just open your phone. I'm like I don't want to, I'm tired of it.

Speaker 1: 1:07:40

But having an event like what you're talking about in the community for parents specifically, it can. It not only teaches you how to safeguard your kids, but also like how to build an in-person, real relationship. We, we flew down here and stay at the hotel by the airport and that morning had some breakfast down in the lobby down there and I even I haven't noticed it, but the waitress she came over and she's it's so amazing. You guys are talking to each other. We're like what are you talking about? She's look at everybody else are all on their phone. That's all they do. You guys are actually, your phones aren't even out, you're just talking and it just. It just points out that profound that's culture in today's society. It's crazy that like human to human engagement, person to person, face to face, is so rare that the lady who sees everybody eating breakfast anymore every morning when they're starting their day likely on a trip around people they probably want to travel with and they're still not engaged in relation, built a relationship or family and families, husbands and wives?

Speaker 1: 1:08:43

if yeah, so it was having breakfast on their phones. It's an interesting yeah, it's interesting to look at you guys are work cut out for us.

Speaker 2: 1:08:51

this goes back to the beginning of what he said. You talked about the sound of freedom, all these things. People are so focused on the kid in the moving van oh, my kid's going to be taken from the pool. 2% are snagging grabs Like it's very little. Why are people not talking about the phone when so much activity? Even criminals engage with so much conversation because they think it's safe? You're not actually, like you said, going undercover. Put some oil on like that. Yeah yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:09:19

These dudes are like kicking it in, like they're boxers dude having a cocktail at home with their feet up. Everything is being communicated, even with your own son in the same room on a phone. So we have to start getting into that world. And that's like going back to our training. How do we get investigators not have to put oil on and walk down the streets and the alleyways, get into the world that the world is on, and that's a digital world. And how do we train them and keep them up with softwares? Where are these new places popping up, learning from the criminals?

Speaker 2: 1:09:55

Hey let's jump over here and you're like, oh great, that's a new one, thanks. We have to live in this digital world like they are, especially when they're trying to hide their identity right and do these things. And so this is so important this conversation around phones, technology, internet and this crazy world that we live in. Imagine this conversation around phones, technology, internet and this crazy world that we live in. Imagine like people couldn't make an interaction 30 years ago, 20 years ago, unless it was in person. You can pay for digital pain now and make interactions, for photos. You don't even have to see that person. Hey, send me some photos, I'll just send you some cash out, or something like that. Like the transactions are in their home. They don't even leave their house. No, hand-to-hand. It's crazy. So we have to start talking about this stuff, man.

Speaker 2: 1:10:40

yeah we want to talk about other things and certain things we can talk about that. But then I tried to steer back to let's get to reality, let's go. This is super dangerous, this right here, incredibly dangerous device and in so many ways and you you mentioned a lot of them too just like waking up middle night. I was telling these guys I got a rule the first hour of my morning I don't even turn, I don't even unless I look at the time. I don't touch my phone. It still sits on. Do not stir, because I get up pretty early. No one needs to be talking to me at that time.

Speaker 2: 1:11:08

Anyways, because I used to get into a habit like you first thing thing I did get on my phone. Now I'm just into spiral thing. That's part of my protection that I do is I need an hour of quiet peace, because as soon as I get into that phone the speed limit just increased Like 200 times. My life just took off. How do we keep that peace and keep that in our kids? Because this is causing anxiety, not only the dangers of really what they're facing, but these are big conversations around. What is the phone's impact on a young adult's brain that is still developing, building the foundation for the future of their livelihood.

Speaker 1: 1:11:45

Yeah, and there's all kinds of stuff about even what does it do to attention span? What does it do to the again, the social interaction. I had this conversation like three days ago with my wife. We were talking about the impact of friends and social media and I was like, yeah, if you do something stupid, like when we were in high school, like you split your pants or whatever and it goes away at the end of the day For the kids, now it perpetuates in these text groups and social media like it never stops. So you do something embarrassing like you can't get away from it and all of a sudden like you're on a barstool account somewhere and it's like you kill yourself. Those things happen.

Speaker 2: 1:12:21

And that's even going into bullying. As a kid you get bullied, maybe by your siblings at home, but for the most part you're getting bullied at school and home's a safe place. You can't even go home and not get bullied online place.

Speaker 1: 1:12:35

You can't even go home and not get bullied online. Yeah, it just never stops. It's a 24-7 cycle. Yeah, yeah, guys, we've been on for well over an hour, so I don't want to keep you all day. I think we could do several of these if you're open to coming on and talking again, either individually or as a group, like whenever. I think this is something that needs constant exposure, like what we talked about, and you've promoted a couple of things. What's your primary way of getting contacted and where can people find you?

Speaker 2: 1:13:01

Yeah, theinnocentorg is our website and if you're law enforcement, click on the law enforcement tab. You can see a little bit. You'll see these guys on there on the video. But that's a way for you to submit through your department's emails, because we need to verify that you work for law enforcement. At least make contact with us so that we can start a conversation and see where you guys are. As far as manpower, equipment's a really easy one for us to be able to provide Training. We're booked out months from now, but we can at least start that conversation and get you guys geared up, and we're starting to develop smaller trainings that we can deploy quicker. But if you're law enforcement, reach out to us through law enforcement community tab on our. If you're a community member, go there. This is.

Speaker 2: 1:13:42

This is really important because, as we can't do it just us, we need the communities to really start may taking effect in their communities, because we can't be in every community. What what you can do is build a community event, fundraiser, whatever it may be, raise awareness, education we're going to have more resources on there but then start a fundraiser to bring the team out to your local community. And now we're not talking about just one department. We're talking about several departments that we're building inside of your community to make your community safer for your children to grow up in. And then on the website too, we're a nonprofit. We're 100% funded by the people to protect the children. So even if you can go click, donate $10 a month and people think, oh, does $10 a month really make an effect? It absolutely does, because if everybody thinks it doesn't, but if people start taking out a massive scale, I think if we have 1200 people right now just say I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 2: 1:14:40

Great, we're going into a state every single month because of you guys and we're gonna be not just just and that's a state like which we know and we're not gonna get all the details. If you have even central of that state, how far does that reach? How many people are you pulling from of that state? How far does that reach? How many people are you pulling from in that state? Your radius of people that you're because of the internet? Duh, you're reaching people within 100, 200 miles of that place that we're going into in that state.

Speaker 2: 1:15:06

So it's important to just get involved, get engaged, use this as an opportunity for you to stand up and do something that you care about your children, the innocence of your children, child sex trafficking and all these things. If this is important to you, take a stand. Go to our website, visit us, follow us at theinnocentusa. That's most of our social media. Youtube channel is at theinnocentchildren, and we're going to be putting out more information and content, too, on some of these topics that we're talking about safeguarding your children. These guys can do more videos as well. So there's a lot of ways to support us. Just stay informed and get educated and then share the education that you're learning.

Speaker 1: 1:15:45

Yeah, yeah we talked about. I think we talked about the algorithm or social media and how it's connecting. We've talked a lot about how it's evil, like the evil that's going on within social media or whatever, but we can also be used as a force for good as far as to spread what we're doing and then work the algorithm in our favor. So there is that good versus evil and we're spreading that good word so that the more people that that see the reels and see the instagram page and all that stuff are more people in the community that might feel like, hey, you know what I'm going to do something here, and whether it's 10 bucks or whatever, or however much money that they want, the only way we get to equip and train local agencies is through their generous donations, and so the more people that can see the content yes, it absolutely raises awareness, but it also raises their ability to go out and affect our mission.

Speaker 2: 1:16:40

Yeah, and like you said, you don't want to get shadow banned. I can't even pay Meta to put out videos. There are statistics from the Department of Justice because they just won't they wouldn't even let me pay to advertise that. Not only post, so the algorithms aren't going to put it out there, but what they can't stop you from doing is sharing that, and if everybody's sharing it, that's the only way we can really have any kind of impact on social media to share information and so it really is important and sometimes liking and all that stuff. People are like hey, like my comment, make a comment, and all that stuff.

Speaker 2: 1:17:14

The reality is like that's the only way we can sometimes get our stuff out there. Like I literally can try to pay for it and they say your ad's been rejected and I try to take it to the next level your ad is still rejected and it's been removed from things like oh my gosh, it's just a fact from the Department of Justice. So it's important to us. We need you guys, anyone watching, if you're following us, like just hit share, even if it's a story, it doesn't even matter, just because that's how we're going to get this out there, grassroots, from the people. We're here for the people. We're funded by the people, so we need the people to do this with us. We can only do so much of what we do. We specialize in doing one thing, but we can't do any of that without the fuel of the people making it happen.

Speaker 1: 1:17:58

So help us help you, get involved, get involved, get off the sidelines. Yeah, a hundred percent. Cool guys. I won't keep you anymore, today and again. Thank you so much and I would love to do this again, cool man.