From the beginning of her tenure as Louisiana’s attorney general, Liz Murrill has had predators who target children online in her sights.
Two and a half years into her term, the task force she put together to target these predators has shown
Every sheriff’s office in the state and multiple local police departments — more than 80 agencies in all — participate in the Louisiana Attorney General’s Internet Crime Against Children task force. Officials say the collaboration has allowed agencies to share information and easily investigate across jurisdictional lines.
The proof the approach is working is in the numbers. According to a recent report by this newspaper’s Patrick Sloan-Turner, Louisiana could make twice as many arrests for child sex crimes this year as it did just two years ago, from 303 in 2024 to a projected 717 in 2026.
It’s also in the individual stories that these agencies tell, about overcoming the challenges of tracking exploitation of children from near and sometimes far via their electronic devices.
The arrest of Jeffrey Venezia Jr. on child pornography and weapons charges, for example, started with a tip from the Covington Police Department. Once it was elevated to the task force, the West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office arrested Venezia at work on outstanding misdemeanor traffic charges, while the Washington Parish Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant on his Bogalusa home and reportedly found child porn. It all played out in a matter of hours, officials said.
Murrill’s office also recently announced the results of “Operation Bottom Dweller,” a three-day undercover sting operation led by the AG’s office and Assumption Parish Sheriff Leland Falcon, which led to 10 suspects being arrested across multiple states.
The multi-jurisdictional approach to fighting this sort of crime makes sense in an era in which those who target children can get to them from anywhere.
“When I was growing up, my mom would say, ‘Hey, don't ride your bike by such and such's house. He's a sex offender,’” said Chris Masters, the Louisiana Bureau of Investigation agent who oversees the task force. “You don’t have that now. There's access to your children who are on their phone while they're sitting on the couch next to you.”
In addition to tearing down jurisdictional boundaries, the task force has trained members of smaller law enforcement agencies and shared resources that would not otherwise be available to them. Among the tools the agencies are increasingly using are stings, in which agents pose as children online in order to identify criminals who are on the hunt.
We’ve all heard the frightening stories of how modern technology makes our children vulnerable.
Because of the work by the task force, we’re hopeful that fewer will become victims.