CBS4 Exclusive: BSO's 'Operation Galaxy' Nets More Than 20 Child Porn Arrests
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BROWARD (CBSMiami) – The Broward Sheriff's Office says "Operation Galaxy" – a seven month-long effort to take people suspected of viewing child pornography off the streets – netted more than 20 arrests, which included a children's gymnastics coach, a child psychologist and a BSO court bailiff.
Early one morning in November, investigators with the Internet Crimes Against Children task force targeted a Hollywood home.
Investigators said they received information that someone at the home was sharing hundreds of images of child pornography – images showing children under the age of 12 and as young as toddlers engaged in sex acts.
CBS4 cameras rolled as detectives with the Broward Sheriff's Office and other local, state and federal agencies carried out computers, hard drives and other electronic equipment.
They also brought out a man named Adam Dagan.
CBS4 tried to speak with Dagan but he did not want to talk.
According to investigators, Dagan admitted the child pornography belonged to him.
Broward Sheriff's Office Sgt. Giueseppe Weller oversees the Internet Crimes Against Children task force.
He said investigators looked at Dagan's computers on scene and found child porn. Weller also said that people who view these images injure the victims again and again.
"The idea is that every time anybody looks at them over and over and over, it's a re-victimization of that actual child whose out there in the world," Weller said.
Since May, Operation Galaxy zeroed in on more than 20 men accused of various sex crimes – mainly possessing child pornography.
Some of the arrests made headlines.
Carl Lechner was a former gymnastics coach, Richard Pitcock worked as a child psychologist in Tennessee and Brian Preston was a BSO bailiff.
The men share something in common. They were all caught, investigators said, by sophisticated software used by the Child Rescue Coalition based in Boca Raton.
CBS4 reported earlier this month how their software tracks images of child pornography.
"Without that technology we don't show up at these houses," Weller said. "We're not going to be there because most of the time you can't see the crime from outside the house."
Weller said Operation Galaxy shows that there is demand for child porn and that this task force will do all it can to try and stop it.
"We can continue to work every single day if we had to," Weller said.
BSO said one of the most alarming things they're seeing in these child porn investigations is the age of the victims.
BSO said a few years ago the children were 15 or 16, now they are seeing many children under the age of 10 and some even younger.
