Police unit to combat online child sexual exploitation

According to the Department of Public Safety, a police unit specifically focused on combating online child sexual exploitation is being established in Greater Victoria. The unit is now being re-established as the number of cases continues to rise.

On Saturday, the Department of Public Safety announced that the Capital Regional District Internet Child Exploitation (ICE) unit will be re-established for three years as part of a $3.5 million initiative to enable municipal police departments to combat online child sexual exploitation.

Public Safety Minister and Attorney General Mike Farnworth said online child exploitation is a daily occurrence and British Columbia must be prepared to protect children from harm as the number of social media platforms continues to grow.

“Children and young people are spending more time online than ever before, which unfortunately makes them more vulnerable to predators who seek to take advantage of them,” he said in a statement.

Police departments in Victoria, Esquimalt, Saanich, Central Saanich and Oak Bay merged in 2021 to form an integrated unit to deal with child internet exploitation cases. The six-month pilot project, which aimed to integrate existing departmental resources from the five police services, was terminated in March 2022.

Central Saanich Deputy Police Chief Kevin Hackett said the re-established CRD ICE unit will continue the collaborative, integrated and coordinated approach it took during its pilot period. “We are confident this new funding will help us build on those successes,” he said in a statement.

Darren Laur, a retired Victoria police officer turned online detective, said he has long advocated for a special ICE unit in Greater Victoria.

“It was going really, really well, but they had to shut it down because of the lack of funding,” he said of the pilot project. “It’s really nice to see that the funding is now back in place to get this unit up and running, because it’s something that’s needed in every jurisdiction in our country.”

Laur, whose company teaches digital literacy through businesses, organizations and schools, said many of these investigations rely on building relationships with partner organizations around the world, due to the often transnational nature of online child sexual exploitation.

“A search warrant issued by a Canadian court has no case law in countries like England.”

While many municipal police departments have at least one officer trained to handle online child exploitation cases, consolidating officers into one unit is “extremely beneficial,” he said.

The CRD unit consists of a sergeant, four officers and a clerk and is similar in size to the Vancouver Police Department’s ICE unit.

It would be the third region-specific ICE unit in the province, joining existing units in Vancouver and Kelowna.

The unit is funded by Public Safety Canada and is part of the fight against serious and organized crime.

The addition of a provincial RCMP unit brings the total number of people working in police units dealing with child internet exploitation cases in the province to 28.

According to Laur, there are still not enough police resources to tackle online child sexual exploitation.

“You could probably triple the budget and still not have enough researchers to handle the influx of these kinds of cases.”

Since 2020, there has been an increase in referrals from other law enforcement agencies to the British Columbia RCMP’s Integrated Child Exploitation Unit.

From 2021 to 2022, the number of reports grew from 4,600 to 9,600.

In October, a 37-year-old Oregon man was sentenced to 20 years in prison for stalking and sexually exploiting three teenage girls in British Columbia on social media between 2020 and 2021, forcing them to send explicit images and then using the images to threaten them.

The three boys, aged 14 and 15 at the time, lived in West Shore, Comox Valley and Surrey.

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