(Editor’s note: The information in this special series is for educational purposes only and is not intended to address any particular case, nor should any articles be taken as legal advice.  Always consult with an attorney on any legal matter.)

We received a request for this week’s Q&A to focus on safety issues that arise when online citizen groups confront people communicating online with a decoy whom they believe to be a minor.

We have all seen television shows where a reporter assumes the identity of an underage person and is contacted online by an adult who begins sexual dialogue that often ends up in a face-to-face meeting. At the meeting, which is filmed by a camera crew for the show, the identity of the “child” is revealed to be an adult and the offender is outed for his sexual intentions with someone he believed to be a minor. I think all of us who have seen these shows get satisfaction when the offender is busted on live television.

There are citizen groups that do the same thing — present a decoy online who assumes the identity of a child who is contacted by an adult and there is often a video uploaded to social media showing the citizen group going to the person’s house to confront them. Many times, people are outraged that the police did not file charges against the person as a result of the citizen group’s work.The reason is that there are a variety of legal impediments that arise.

I agree with the person who suggested this as a topic to focus on safety concerns that arise when a citizen goes to a person’s home to confront them. When a police officer encounters a suspect for an arrest, there’s a potential for the suspect to act out violently to resist the arrest. Police officers are assaulted every day in our country, merely for performing their jobs, including trying to effectuate an arrest. Most of the time they are able to overcome the suspect’s aggression due to their training, equipment and backup.

When citizen investigators go to a suspect’s house, they do not have the right to take them into custody and, further, they do not have the same tools. Their confrontation of suspects increases the potential that the encounter could turn violent.

When we see the citizen groups confront someone online or on television, from a human perspective, we find it satisfying because we think it will allow offenders to be held accountable.  But legal impediments arise in these cases that often preclude police from filing charges.

If an officer assumes the identity of a minor and communicates online with an adult who tries to set up a meeting between the “child” and themselves for a sexual purpose, the police can charge the offender with the crime of unlawful contact.

That crime requires that an offender intentionally be in contact with a minor or a law enforcement officer acting in the performance of duties who has assumed the identity of a minor for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity. As you can see from the definition of the statute, this crime cannot be charged if the person who has assumed the identity of a minor is not a police officer.

There are other investigative steps that I won’t divulge in this article, that a police officer can take that would allow them to be able to charge other crimes like attempted rape, for example.  Sometimes the police get lucky and they are able to find a chargeable offense in one of these cases and, as in a recent case locally, we were able to identify a chargeable offense.

But other charges were not able to be filed because a police officer was not involved and law enforcement investigatory steps were not taken despite the good intentions of the citizen group. I can, however, see their goal is nothing other than to identify those who are attempting to prey on children.

A related matter is when a citizen investigation interferes with an ongoing police investigation.  When officers are in another department’s primary jurisdiction, the standard rule is to notify the department to “deconflict” or to reduce the risk of colliding efforts and increase coordination.  This reduces the chance of a friendly fire injury and also prevents one investigation from interfering in another, as would be the case if one department makes an investigation known prematurely. Evidence — and the time and effort to get to a certain point — is lost with premature disclosure in many cases that involve criminal activity over a period of time.

Everyone wants child predators to be held accountable. Sometimes the work of private citizen groups can be helpful to police. Other times it can lead to reduced charges, or no charges, or even a safety risk. On one hand, being “outed” may have its benefits even if there are no charges but, on the other hand, I suspect that the mere “outing” will not curb criminal behavior and may only make the offender smarter to the ways of being caught in the future.