A Warrenton police officer will soon join the Missouri Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, based at St. Charles County Police Department’s Cyber Crime Division.In a collaboration between the city of Warrenton and St. Charles County, a yet-to-be-selected officer will begin reporting for duty in St. Charles, working to solve cyber crimes and examining digital technology for evidence of wrongdoing.The officer will remain a Warrenton employee, but be under the command of St. Charles County. The collaboration is part of a statewide initiative to develop an effective response to child sexual exploitation through forensic investigation, training and community services.“We’ve been given an opportunity, and certainly a great honor,” said Warrenton Police Chief Greg Houdyshell. “Although we will lose an officer for a moment, that position will be filled, so there won’t be any change in personnel numbers within the city.”Houdyshell said the department already is advertising for a future opening while narrowing down which officer will make the move to the cyber crime task force.The officers who have volunteered for the assignment have to show they have aptitude to work with information technology, Houdyshell said. He said he intended to have a candidate selected in early March.After that comes a “steep learning curve,” with up to six months of training to solve crimes that happen in cyberspace and track down online predators.Having a Warrenton officer working for the cyber crime task force will provide a valuable resource, Houdyshell said.“I’m looking forward to the knowledge and experience that whoever gets assigned to this task force is going to bring back to the department and share with our officers here,” he said. “As he gets more experience, he’s going to bring that back to the department ... and bring these guys up to speed on the various technology issues that they face and that they should be looking for when they’re investigating cases.”Warrenton detectives already work with the cyber crime task force almost every day to analyze technological evidence, Houdyshell said.An upside to this arrangement is that it won’t impact the Warrenton Police Department’s budget. St. Charles County has a state grant that funds salaries for the cyber crime task force. Warrenton will still pay the officer, but will be reimbursed up to $51,408 ($65,250 during the first year) by St. Charles County, according to the agreement.The funding comes from the State Cyber Crime Grant administered by the State of Missouri and the Department of Public Safety.Lt. Mark O’Neill, the head of the Missouri Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said he was looking for an officer from Warrenton because his team investigates crimes throughout eastern Missouri. The task force also has officers from the cities of St. Charles, St. Peters, O’Fallon and Wentzville, as well as Franklin and Lincoln counties, O’Neill said.Having officers from different regions provides valuable local knowledge and resources when investigating crimes against children, which can happen almost anywhere, he said.“It’s everywhere. You can’t say it’s geographically restricted,” O’Neill said. “It’s not like somebody’s doing a bank robbery where you see it. What they’re doing, you usually don’t see it. The priority is the risk to the children.”In one recent Warren County case, Lake Sherwood resident Christopher Schroeder was convicted of statutory rape and transporting a minor across state lines to engage in criminal activity, after he allegedly lured a 15-year-old Ohio girl to meet him through an online chat room in 2015.Police used Facebook and online messages to help track the teen and found her three weeks later at Schroeder’s home in Warren County. Schroeder pleaded guilty to the crimes and was sentenced in December to 15 years in prison.Finding those types of criminals before they hurt children is the task force’s primary mission, although O’Neill said his team is available to assist with any sort of online crime or evidence stored in a computer.“These types of investigations are a different dynamic than, say, working a burglary, because of the technologies involved,” O’Neill said. “It’s not just ‘he said, she said.’ We come back most of the time with some pretty good forensic evidence.”Having a Warrenton officer will make the task force more efficient while working in this area, O’Neill said. The team’s workload could be streamlined by something as simple as the officer being able to pick up evidence before he commutes from Warren County to St. Charles.Making investigations more efficient is important to the task force, because it has to process huge amounts of evidential data, O’Neill said. One case involved more than 700,000 pictures stored on a computer, he said, and all of them needed to be examined as evidence. Another case included 19 devices that needed to be analyzed for the investigation, he said.The average case requires about 42 hours to analyze all the media involved, according to information from the St. Charles County Police Department.The agreement to assign a Warrenton officer to the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force was approved by the Warrenton Board of Aldermen with a 6-0 vote at its Tuesday, Feb. 7, meeting.ICAC