North Yorkshire Police has urged people not to support online child abuse activists and said it will not work with them.
The constabulary issued a statement today saying the number of online vigilante groups had increased in the county but they risked hampering prosecutions and often targeted innocent people.
Such groups often use a decoy victim – an adult pretending to be a child – to snare suspected child abusers.
They then live-stream or post videos on social media of them confronting suspects, often calling the police at this stage.
The statement said:
“We have specialist teams working hard around the clock to identify and bring offenders to justice and all too often these groups put the lives of innocent people in danger, interfere with our ongoing investigations and risk the course of fair justice.”
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Detective Inspector Paula Eccles, from North Yorkshire Police’s safeguarding team, said:
“The police service does not endorse online child abuse activist groups and we will not work with them.
“Unlike our highly-trained officers in the online abuse and exploitation team and the digital forensics unit, they operate without any procedures to keep people safe.
“Accused people can become vulnerable to self-harm and there are cases around the country of people dying by suicide because of the action of such groups.”
‘Cause cases to collapse’
Det Insp Eccles added some groups operated as a cover for crimes like blackmail and extortion and there was “no way of making sure that these groups act on reliable evidence”.
She added:
“The standard of evidence that is gathered is also often poor, there are issues with legal disclosure, and the way the groups share their evidence publicly online before it has been tested at court.
“Some evidential issues can even cause cases to collapse. This is completely unacceptable.”
Police nationally arrest more than 400 people for child sexual abuse and protect more than 500 children from harm each week.
North Yorkshire Police said its specialist teams “have the expertise and experience to carry out thorough, complex and intelligence-led investigations, as well as preparing evidence that can stand up to scrutiny by the Crown Prosecution Service”.
It urged anyone concerned about indecent images of children and sexual abuse to report it online via its website or by calling 101, or 999 if it’s an emergency.