Excerpt
TAMPA, Fla. — Florida law enforcement recovered 163 missing children during a five-day statewide operation, Attorney General James Uthmeier and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement announced Tuesday.
The children, ranging in age from two months to 17 years old, were located during Operation Statewide Shield, a first-of-its-kind state agency-led initiative focused on finding missing, endangered and exploited children.
Uthmeier said many of the children had experienced abuse, neglect or exploitation, with some believed to have been victims of human trafficking.
At least three arrests have resulted from the operation, with charges involving lewd and lascivious acts involving minors, lewd and lascivious battery, interference with child custody and resisting officers without violence. Officials said additional arrests are expected as investigations continue.
So they only “believe” that “some” children where victims of human trafficking. Only three arrests. This really doesn’t sound like they broke up some network of pedophiles like people imagine. My guess is most cases were some custody battles (one parent kidnaps the kid) and runaways. I imagine those are low priority cases for police so that’s why they didn’t look for them earlier.
I would find it hard to believe “Florida law enforcement” was involved in anything related to actually helping kids not from wealthy families.
Probably used palantir and took credit
Tain’ts doin nothing to protect them from wealthy individuals, either.
Did they just look in an ICE facility?
Probably locked up at mar Lago
I imagine Flock cameras would claim credit…if they actually helped in any way. No…they did not? Unsurprising
The cynic in me wonders why this type of operation isnt being conducted regularly. And also, I worry it’s going to be used to promote mass surveillance.
Ill try to just be happy these kids are safe now.
They didn’t say anything about any investigative breakthrough. Cynical me went right to “it was so easy, why haven’t they been doing their jobs all along?”
I too can’t help but feel like it’s a double edged sword. Of course it’s great news that they saved 163 kids.
But it said it was the result of a 5 day operation. To me that seems a bit too simple and easy… why don’t the just keep doing it or do it again if all it takes is 5 days of manpower? Seems like the payoff is exponentially more than the cost.
That’s simply not how investigation works? They had a breakthrough that led to some actionable lead that resulted in arrests after 5 days.
It’s not 5 days of laying bricks to build a house, it’s searching in the woods until you find one, however long it takes.
Uthmeier said his office has arrested more than 2,000 people accused of crimes against children since he took office and that more than 400 missing children have been recovered through law enforcement efforts during that period.
According to him (the FL Attorney General, the guy making the announcement), it is an ongoing effort.
Arrested everyone except the guy and his pals in mar-a-lago.
Okay that’s reassuring
How many alive?
“operation”. Everything has to be an “operation” now, even if you’re just doing something routine and boring … has to be an “operation” because that sounds like some sort of glorious large-scale military thing … World War Two-ey even, and yes, yes, a glorious victory is in store, a victory not seen since, well, WW2! I think I’ll go food shopping today, let’s see, “Operation Rotten Banana”. Houseclean a little… “Operation Airtight Vacuum”. Probably take a shit later - “Operation Excreta President”. All will succeed, fabulous successes like nobody has ever seen, not since Patton probably, yeah, nobody can stop these operations, they’re yuge, especially that last one.
It’s part of the militarization of the police which is absolutely a page out of the authoritarian playbook.
I can almost guarantee they extended the suffering of many of these victims just so they could get the number. I also can guarantee it was originally either 200 or 175, but some of those victims died before they could get to them.
BS presser by a BS state with BS statistics
Two… months.
Were they waiting so they could get them all in one week? Why not just get them when you know where they are?
I get the desire to swoop in as soon as possible but that often isn’t the most effective option. (Speaking of crime generally) If the suspects know each other then if one goes down the others are likely to go into hiding or destroy evidence. In human trafficking cases that can mean fewer rescues. Also while you may have enough evidence of some crime it might be a relatively minor one instead of one that could put them away for good (think Al Capone getting caught for taxes rather than everything else).
The first operations might’ve spooked the other kidnappers.
Once again proving they always could they just don’t want too.
This sort of thinking makes doing nothing the only winning move. Can we just be happy for a minute?
Doing nothing for the last 6 months or so is the only way they can pull this off. Do you really believe that they had no clue all that these kids were in jeopardy before this 5-day period? They just happened to figure it all out just now? I don’t believe it. I think that they had plenty of tips and clues but they left them sitting in their to-do boxes until someone up the chain decided that they needed a PR win. Then they put in the effort to go and rescue these kids as quickly as they could just so they could pat themselves on the back and get some good headlines before the midterms.
Awesome. But please make this permanent.
