@Westdenali For many on here it is not semantics or minimization (it was only one this or that). There are many on here that are dealing with a family member that download 2 or 3 or 2000 CP images knowingly and intentionally but there are also many dealing with the same issue except their family member did not knowingly and intentionally download 2 or 3 CP images. Unfortunately they were seen every bit as guilty and must suffer the same penalties as a person that knowingly and intentionally chose to download CP images. Where's are your morals on that type of situation?

I think it is very telling about the differences in viewpoints when you make the assumption that these people are immoral and not in their right mind because they aren't accepting responsibility.

This stuff is not really "comparative" is it? (me or mine "only did X" .... while you or yours (the other guy/LE obviously) did a lot more so "my" guy is justified and the other guy is morally reprehensible and it's OK to despise them ???)

I do think it matters to "take responsibility" for betraying the trust and taking sexual advantage of people /children (even children forced to display themselves on CP sites) And I don't think it's OK to say in effect, "They (LE or The System) are hurting me so much now that the hurt I inflicted when I had misused my power back then does not matter." Acknowledging harm done means "taking responsibility for your own behavior and figuring out how not to hurt yourself and others again. It means you really do know that Denial is not a river in Egypt. That just "programing" and telling yourself and your family poor me stories will not keep you safe from re-offending if/when temptation rears it's ugly head...again. And, unless you and your family are prepared for another serving of LE you might want to figure yourself out and find out how not to string yourself up again and again. And how not to misuse your own power...never mind how LE misuses theirs.

Wow - just wow... When you say something like If you did not do this or that you cannot criticize that means the same as you cannot have an opinion. It is the same thing as saying no one in the country can criticize the white house administration unless they have been the President themselves. And that is horse dung ... lol

It may come as a surprise to you but everyone can see that you are angry - caps are not necessary. I am not shouting at you .... When I say done I mean it. I am done ... West and I have had many a civil conversation without attacking each other and we have supported each other and others on the board many times - West and I are fine - we do not attack each other

Wow, this thread lit up over the weekend.

I would like to point out that there are many times that people are not actually 'read their rights'. They are presumed to know that they have Miranda rights. An assumption that is made, by who? Those doing the arresting? Those that said they didn't need to be actually read anymore? I am not completely sure, but I have my suspicions.

Yes if you demand to speak to an attorney, the cops do not have to stop talking to you. YOU just don't have to talk. Sure they can't 'legally' ask you questions, but will that actually stop them?

Now for everyone here that thinks that unless you walk a mile in the shoes of someone else you can't have an opinion is most likely full of shit, because opinions are like assholes, everyone has one... Those that don't must have no asshole, thus full of shit. Opinions are like assholes, everyone has one to excrete what they think or have come up with, with the information they have at their disposal. So those of you with LE experience and those without LE experience are going to have opinions regardless of what someone else believes is the truth.

Police do conduct an investigation, following leads, interviewing witnesses, following whatever information that they come across no matter how good it is or how bad it is. I have been falsely accused of a crime, I had a boss accuse me of stealing. He called the cops they did an investigation. The man had nothing. But that didn't stop the cop from interrogating me.

I witnessed a cop get the tar beat out of him. I was working at the time, tending bar. The fight happened not in the area of the bar but in one of the rooms that were on the other side of the wall from the bar (and the cash register.) I was interrogated for a couple of hours after I was asked and voluntarily came down to the cop shop on my own time to give my statement. There I was interrogated by the chief of police (this was a small college town) and asked questions like, "why didn't you go help the officer?" My answer was he was a trained officer that was in the middle of a fight, what power did I really have to break that up? My responsibility was to the establishment for which I worked. They intimidated me, tried to bully me in to defending my own actions when it was their officer that broke their rules of engagement when patrolling the bars in town. That cop entered with his partner, but when his partner took someone outside to give them a ticket, he didn't go with them but stayed in the bar and proceeded to instigate the encounter with another patron that was there. He should have just walked out with his partner. I saw it start. He made some poor choices.

Police as individuals are more often than not, not despised. But I don't think that anyone that has been involved with someone in LE or was in LE themselves can deny that when that uniform goes on the mindset changes from private citizen to LE officer. This is a proven mindset change in psychology experiments.

http://www.prisonexp.org/ - The Stanford Prison Experiment

http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-real-lesson-of-the-stanford-prison-experiment - an article about it in the NewYorker.

There there is the psychology of torture: http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/why-do-we-keep-repeating-the-milgram-experiments/

Human beings are despicable folks in GENERAL when given the proper motivation or permission. LE gives people permission to be a certain way. Do any of you ex-LE, retired LE, etc disagree? If so, on what grounds? I don't need to 'guess' motivations on why or how you did your jobs in LE, but I can tell you that the situation that is set up brings out these types of behaviors described in the articles above. That is proven with science.

Now to address this issue that seems to be about CP and how innocent someone is that downloads a zip file with a 100 photos, 1 of which is CP that wasn't listed in the file name or contents. That person then downloads what they believe and were told was adult, thus legal porn images. Then some LE officer come banging on their door because they were the ones that put out that zip file with the 'bad image' in it and that person now is someone that 'views CP' thus a sex offender potentially child molesting monster. Really? All you former LE officers here, do you really believe that the person is now some kind of monster? Because they downloaded one piece among all the legal images they were looking for? Even if they saw it, was absolutely disgusted by the image, deleted it and moved on with their life. As all of us in the IT world know, that image is still on the drive, unless wiped with a DOD re-write of 0's and 1's at least 8 times to completely remove any trace of that image. Well since it can be 'retrieved' by LE even if it has been deleted, that person is guilty of possession of that piece of CP, even if they never intended to view it. Now for those that were downloading and saving images knowingly, well they broke the law. But if you have ever clicked on something, downloaded some malware and then all of a sudden you are getting porn pop ups and Viagra ads coming up all over your screen, did you intentionally do that? Or did you click and didn't know that was what was going to happen? I have cleaned enough computers of this kind of crud to know that people do it by accident, that they unknowingly download malware and then suffer the consequences of it. Does this make them porn surfers since they got those pop ups? Does that make them SOs because one of those images was of a 16 yr old girl? Or does that make them suckers of the internet? People that just aren't savvy or computer literate? So should the person that contracted this malware be sent to prison? They broke the law, the images are saved to their TEMP files on their computer. Do they deserve 25 years minimum? They certainly didn't mean to download it, but it happened. According to what I have been reading here, they are guilty and they should go to prison, because they did something against the law and the law is the law right?

Which brings up another really good point. In most SO cases the law requires that the prosecution to prove INTENT. This is huge and mostly forgotten by defense attorneys and is not even known by the public, because if they were taught the things necessary to procure a conviction in a court they wouldn't talk when arrested, and they would make it very hard for them to prove INTENT, which is necessary. But because most talk way too much when initially questioned, their ability to maximize on the intent part of the statutes they are being indicted under is lost.

The one thing that this whole experience has taught me is that most law enforcement know nothing of the law and the legal aspects of court. They know what they need to know to investigate and get good information for the prosecution. This is why I would rather have ever encounter, interrogation, etc that police have with the public filmed and recorded. It would end a great deal of the shady practices that go on in interrogation rooms.

From what I have read and learned over the years, most offending, be it sexual or otherwise, is about POWER over the other person or thing. Be it perceived or tangible, LE use their power of their position to gleen information from people in a variety of ways. Offenders manipulate those around them to get the things they want. People in general manipulate those around them to get the things they want too. It is called human nature.

I've said this before... Homosapiens are above all else two things. They are Opportunists and they are not nice. This is proven over and over to me almost everyday, it is in the news it is in my community where I can read it in the newspaper and it is in most relationships.

Didn't all of us start out "holier than thou?" The mother whose 19 son was just arrested for having sex with a 14 year old girl he met on a "dating" site, says to one and all, "This is not OUR 'life style'." (when I read that I thought, and she thinks this is my lifestyle?") The father says this is all a dam lie. Other's say it was only once, or twice, or he/she "liked 'it' or ...

My father who molested me would have told you without blinking an eye, "I'm married. I'm a good family man. I go to church." Other families (the Duggar's son for example) want to say they "only committed adultery" when in fact he sexually molested several of his adopted and his biological sisters. Now the Duggars say it was "only' his wife he betrayed, it was "only" adultery and they have gone to church and prayed over his sin of adultery and his wife and parents say "'it's' been handled"

I don't know what the girls he molested have to say about their pain because they have been very effectively silenced by the church, by their abuser and by their family and now by the system. They probably even feel guilty for "attracting" their brother's sexual attentions and certainly feel guilty about bringing the "System" and LE and the registry down on everyone's head. and then you say with many others " I personally hate being thrown in the same group as other sex offenders."

None of us want to be classified as "One of those people" but you know what? We are and it's the prejudices of society that we still harbor inside ourselves that keep us stuck on "holier than thou" And it's only our own willful pride that keeps us stuck on the harms being done to us rather that admitting the harms we meted out to others. Sexual abuse is pervasive but so is pride of place. That's why child sexual abuse (yes even on the computer) has been taboo for millennium. But unless we all get off this pity pot none of us can transform our lives and be sure that the next generations of children coming up won't be harmed in much the same way by our refusal to recognize, take responsibility and share our own experience strength and hope with people just like ourselves.

Wisconsin,

Speaking of filming and recording interrogations, many in LE have a complete meltdown when they see someone filming them while making an arrest or in a confrontation with a citizen. Police have been known to threaten citizens taking pictures in this manner.

Some have even gone so far as to ask legislators to enact a law that would prohibit a tax paying citizen from filming them when there is a fight, or in any action a cop might be engaged.

Wonder why? Why do they not want to be filmed so everyone will know what exactly went on? Would that not protect the officer as well as the citizen if anything came up like a civil law suit or if the police were forced to use lethal force?

I think we all know the reason cops don't like to be filmed.

rewdiazepam

West.. You're out of line and I don't appreciate it. It just confirms my feeling about cops. Good luck with your life and attitude.

We are very good lawyers for our own mistakes, but very good judges for the mistakes of others.

Rew, no one every wants to be filmed, I know I certainly don't... We don't want to be filmed at work, we don't want to be filmed in stores, we don't want to be filmed on the street by any type of surveillance camera and we don't like being fimed in the privacy of our own homes either. I don't blame them for not wanting it to be filmed either while at work, I wouldn't. And especially when there are so many laws and rules about employers filming their employees in various places at their work places. LE feels the same way about being filmed at their place of work.

But I also believe that those stupid cameras are necessary too, regardless of m personal opinion about them. It helps reduce shrink in stores to keep prices from going through the roof from theft. It keeps employees at cash registers from skimming money out of the till, which is a sure fire way to help a business go out of business. It keeps people from running red lights and causing a vehicle accident. Those ones they use for speeding keep some of those busy streets less harrowing for those that travel them.

Yes they are an invasion of privacy, but then again if we as a species weren't so dishonest we wouldn't need them right? So who really is to blame for the camera trend? WE ARE. Let us not forget the most popular type of TV show on the air today... REALITY TV. People just eat up that shit! The voyeur in all of us can't NOT LOOK at those stupid shows!!! They are the highest rated, they have huge followings and the 'regular people' on them are famous for their 12 weeks or whatever the length of time the show is on. They call that the 15 minutes of fame and from what I can tell, there are a lot of folks out there that seek out that 15 minutes.

Of course cops don't want to be filmed, neither do the rest of us... because as we all know, things can be edited to take actions out of context and help a person look far worse than the situation warranted. Then again it can keep people honest in the same breath.

Ok i will make this short. There are some of you who know my history and seen my posts. There are those that i have messaged back and forth without putting it on the site. So those of you know i have good intentions here. Perhaps i need to reiterate again.

As for Free....no way was implying you knowingly downloaded CP. What you have been through is bull. It should have never happened. Big difference between knowingly committing an offense and not.

Advocate...we have had good conversations. I respect you and believe you are a fair, compassionate, and intelligent person.

Aladdin...whole heartlily agree with you. Goes back to kowingly or not. It is not fair.

Janet....many good points.

Wisconsin...i agree with alot of your ideas, opinions, and insight. You have experienced situations that you shouldnt had to go through. I do disagree when you say "human beings are despicable...." I dont agree or believe a person is a monster for viewing CP. Perhaps some of you think I do. But go back and read my posts. If i did i wouldnt be here because i wouldnt care.

Why am I here??????I am here cause I care. I want to help those especially going through this for the first time. I believe in helping those families that have loved ones accusedconvicted of sex crimes. We have all been through it. Its almost like the 5 stages of death. But at least with a death there is an end. With what we are dealing with seems to have no end. There is no finality.

For those of you who dont know my story....I love and care for a man who brutally raped a strange woman. Broke into her house and assaulted her in ways that disgust me. This man was dating my daughter for many years. He was like a son to me. So count the issues i am dealing with? Not technically family. My daughter wanting to stay with him. My role as a mother and a LE officer. His family who I love , having to deal with the criminal justice system for the first time.

Ok i said this would be short....i lied. Sorry if i offended anyone. Will be posting another topic later and want all of your opinions whether i like them or not. Lets not forget why we are here.

West, I don't believe people are monsters for viewing CP either.... But some of the statements that some made, seemed to, or appeared to imply that those that commit the crime even if they didn't intend to or knew it was happening, are... That was all I was trying to point out and ask the questions of.

I also know you care, and even those that care can still have contradicting opinions in their own mind and thought process as changing that to the point that is necessary is a work in progress for most of us. Because like it was mentioned before, we all came from a place before this all came down for us and our loved ones, that we made broad assumptions about groups of people that we never met. Shit, most of us still do, just ask anyone about terrorism...

Human beings are despicable, we do horrendous things to our fellow man, heinous things. From beheadings, to sexual assault, to false arrests, kidnapping, hijacking, murder, theft, and the list goes on... There was an entire book written about it by Machiavelli, I am sure most of you know it or of it... Dante's Inferno, it is about all 9 levels of hell for those that do all sorts of nasty things to their fellow man. To believe that the humans of this world are not despicable is naive.

I know I am not perfect, I know I have been mean to people, intended or not. I know that everyone here has done things that they wish they could take back, because I don't believe anyone here is a bonafide saint. The first step to becoming a better person is realizing you are never going to be perfect, nor is anyone else. But to realize that we are flawed, that we make choices everyday that determine this too. Whether that choice was to let someone cut ahead of you in line or was that you asking to cut in?

I will not take back any of the awful or spectacular experiences that I have had, they made me who I am, they have made me see things I wouldn't have had I not been through it and it made me recognize things that I would have been oblivious to had I not lived my life the way I have. I wouldn't take back a second of it. Why? Because I learned something from it, that was the point.

Janet: That's why child sexual abuse (yes even on the computer) has been taboo for millennium. But unless we all get off this pity pot none of us can transform our lives and be sure that the next generations of children coming up won't be harmed in much the same way by our refusal to recognize, take responsibility and share our own experience strength and hope with people just like ourselves. "

Sure,.. my son , who accidentally downloaded 2 cp he didn't look at should get off his pity pot. You aren't the one who, at 19 had to go to prison and is now labeled a sex offender. I was abused too as a child, my son was as well, and I know a lot of people who were. Sounds like you're the one who's on the 'pot'. I'm not going to feel sorry for you either.

And actually cp has not been illegal for millenium. These laws started escalating about the time my son was born, about 25 years ago. Before that he would have not even gotten a slap on the wrist. Read up, it's all available on the internet.. but be careful you don't accidentally download something that will put you on the list.

"That's why child sexual abuse (yes even on the computer) has been taboo for millennium." Japan made CP possession 13 months ago. The US made it illegal in 1978. Most other countries were some time in between usually the 1990's.

Nakohichi.....i apologize for making my comments when i did not know your story. It was wrong of me to assume your son knowingly downloaded CP.
I dont feel sorry for me. In fact my experience has opened my eyes. It has made me search my soul. It has challenged me in ways that i neverthought of.
This computer age is a new thing. And there are so many flaws. I feel helpless on this subject. We all love the internet. But then again there are many downfalls with it. It is a double edged sword.
I have to admit i am computer illiterate. I barely get by. I dont understand it but i am sure willing to participate in it. I, too have googled something only to have a penis in my face. It is like really? So you try and delete then more shit keeps popping up.
We need to make a change. We all make excuses why we dont have the time. But we need to.

Thank you West...

I also was not read my Miranda rights until the interrogation was done.

And my lawyer seemed more concerned with having coffee with the DA than trying to dis-prove intent....