Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Col steal susa's Light Justice listening him as a faith
Shadows a Secrets Line, Doctor Curry.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Last the Sky Americans Graminologist Colin Sales of the Law
in the Anlacy's a Crime Freak.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And Change Bruce.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
And here's America's Criminologists, Doctor Curry Myers.
Speaker 5 (00:42):
Thank you, guess comy, sir, welcome to America's Chronologists. I'm
doctor Curry Myers, retired major county sheriff and former special
agent and state trooper. Also spent fifteen years in the
world of academia, so you can forgive me for that,
serving as a school dean and as a professor teaching criminology, leadership,
organizational behavior, all those kinds of things. This is a
(01:03):
show where we'll talk about crime culture and the foundations
that sustain civil society. As you know, I talk about
the three important pillars, as I say, of faith, family,
and formation. Because crime doesn't begin in the streets. It
begins when those foundations are weaken and generally it begins
at home. The good news is is it starts in
(01:24):
the home, so we can build things up from the home.
And as always, if you'd like to explore more about
my program, my work on applied criminology, research papers, policy papers,
all my interviews, anything like that at all. You can
visit my substack page at doctor Curriemeyers dot substack dot com.
Please check it out. This segment of America's criminologists is
(01:47):
brought to you by Real Resilience. That's our ee L.
It's a transformative program helping inmates prepare for successful reentry.
Using inspirational films and guy discussion. Real Resilience teaches practical
tools to build resilience, strengthen relationships, and restore hope for
(02:08):
the future. It's real learning through real stories where positive
choices are modeled, not just preached. Real Resilience because re
entry isn't just release, it's a second chance done right. Okay.
As you know, my opening riff is associated with what
we're going to talk about for the day. Today's a doozy.
Today we're going to talk about something that affects in
(02:30):
nearly every family in America, and that's smartphones and our children. Now,
for years, we've heard the argument that phones are just tools,
neutral devices, harmless technology. But law enforcement officers, investigators and
parents across the country knows something very different is happening.
Quite frankly, it's not good. Smartphones are not just communication
(02:54):
tools anymore. They're access points, access to strangers, access to predators,
access to content. Children were never meant to navigate these alone.
We have literally open front doors of our homes to evil.
Just opened it. Welcome aboard, Come see all my family,
(03:20):
Come on in. That's what we've been able to do today.
And here's the reality. The risk environment for kids today
is dramatically different than it was ten, fifteen years ago.
I dare say it's dramatically different than it was just
five years ago. What used to require physical proximity now
requires only a username, and I don't even know if
you need that anymore. With experts, what used to take months,
(03:44):
maybe a year of grooming twenty five years ago can
take weeks, sometimes days, maybe even hours. And what used
to be rare is now routine. So the question isn't
whether technology is advancing it, as of course we can't
stop it. Technology is something we have to embrace. We
(04:06):
have to use it every day. AI is something we
have to use, get used to it. But we have
to understand there is a dark side of anything, and
they're certainly a dark side of this because protecting children
it's not about politics, it's about responsibility. And today we're
going to talk with someone who has spent years on
(04:27):
the front lines investigating crimes against children. Retired detective and
child predator expert Kevin Kronister really understands what's happening out
there on the street, and he knows what the data
is about. He's testified in front of legislatures and those
practical solutions are starting to emerge across the country and
(04:50):
he's been behind some of that legislation. Retired Detective Kevin
Cronister spent years chasing child pedophiles and now he's focused
on consultation and work in the child in the world
of child predation. He's available for hire if companies want
to reach out to him and do so. He also
has a company called Guardian Training Solutions. Friends, this is
(05:11):
an excellent training uh not only online but physical training
that they do for law enforcements. So if you're a
law enforcement practitioner and you're listening, check up on Guardian
Training Solutions and see what Kevin and his team is doing.
There at some remarkable stuff. Kevin, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Thank you, Doctor Mars I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Good to see you as always, my friend. So, yes, Kevin,
your years of experience investigating child predators, it's dark, it's difficult,
it has not been easy. You have you have backlogs,
any any investigator in this has backlog cases that could
be in the thousands. Has smartphone access changed the risk
(05:58):
environment for kids compare to just five years ago? We
already we know it's done ten fifteen years ago, but
just in the last couple of years, how much has
it changed?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah? One hundred percent. I mean, you know, like you
said in two thousand and eight, right, we're talking about,
you know, predators having to wait for kids to log
on from the family computer, you know, to a chat room.
Up until, you know, five years ago, kids still had
to be somewhat present on social media for predators to
(06:29):
be able to access them. And you fast forward to
today and everything that a child does digitally is somehow
connected to the Internet and some type of a social aspect.
So I think you and I on one of the
previous shows talked about massive multi player online role playing
(06:53):
games mmrpgs.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
And an example would be like.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Roadblocks you have Fortnite, those kinds of those kinds of games.
And so parents today are thinking, you know, oh, you know,
my child, I don't give him Snapchat, I don't give
him Instagram, and so he's not on social media. So
he's you know, I'm doing the right things. And they
(07:21):
don't realize that a lot of the games and messaging
apps that are even specifically designed for kids have vulnerabilities.
And you know, these these online role playing games. All
it takes is for somebody to send a direct message
or talk to them over the mic and say, you know, hey,
(07:46):
I really enjoy playing with you. Why don't we hop
back on tomorrow at six o'clock. And then they start
meeting up regularly to play this video game together. And
that's how that grooming process starts, right and so and
then you mentioned with the advent of AI. You know,
AI five years ago was just a you know, just
(08:10):
just kind of appearing on the scene. I mean, it's
been around for a while, but it really started making
an impact in things like our child exploitation investigations just
five years ago. And as AI improves, I mean it
improves week to week, you know, and and AI is
being used by child predators. The kids don't know who
(08:32):
they're really talking to. The person appears to be another child.
They talk like a child, they interact like a child.
They have all these photos of them as a child
interacting with other children. And the reality is is that
it's you know, some forty year old dude in a
basement who's using AI to create this fake persona. And
(08:55):
it's just the advent of all these different technologies all
at one over the last five years has really made
it difficult for parents to keep up, I think, especially
parents who are not necessarily technologically inclined themselves.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
Yeah, and it's not just improving each year, but it's
also learning. I mean, it's learning behaviors, right, and it's
learning what I can do differently or better. I'm sure
they're learning how to evade being shut down. I mean,
you know these are the It's it's weird how you
know it can it's it's it's always going to be
(09:36):
one probably you know, fifteen steps ahead of law enforcement,
just because it's gonna it's going to learn our parents
misunderstanding today how quickly predators can reach. It seems like,
you know, all the kids are still on Fortnite. I mean,
it's a I don't know, I'm you know, when I
ask around, of course I'm nobody. I'm in my sixties
(09:57):
and I have grandchildren, of course, but Fortnite seems to
be the the big one roadblocks, you know, is it
is it is a regional interest in different types of
of these communication communication platforms, and it's different to be found,
or is it.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I don't I don't think so. I mean I think
that you know, for the most part, the games that
are the most popular or they're they're the most popular everywhere.
I do know that you have the ability in a
lot of these games to play with people from your area,
right or create regional groups, and so there's there's definitely
(10:39):
that that component. I think one of the biggest things
that parents misunderstand about the current technology landscape is that
they're still running. They're still operating with like a two
thousand and five threat model right where they're like, don't
talk to strangers on the internet, right and make sure
(11:01):
that you know you aren't given out your information and
that kind of thing, which is not a bad thing
to be aware of. But that's not really the problem
in twenty twenty five, because the reality is is that
in twenty twenty five, most of your information has already
been spread on the internet, right, and so it's pretty
easy to access, and so they're believing that their child
(11:30):
is probably going to encounter something that's obviously wrong, right,
Like that's the mindset is, like, you know, well, you
might get a creepy message right from some guy you
don't know, and that'll be like a signal that this
is a bad thing. And I think they also misunderstand
the speed at which this happens. You know, it used
(11:52):
to be that, like you mentioned, it would take a
long time for this grooming process to set in, and
so parents had a window of time to recognize that
this was a problem and to intercede before the grooming
process ran its course. I've had cases that went from
first contact in the morning to a physical meetup by
(12:14):
the afternoon because of how easily technology facilitates the grooming process,
and so parents I think they kind of underestimate the
speed at which this happens too. And there's no obvious
stranger on the internet anymore, because kids are becoming kind
of desensitized to interacting with strangers because of the amount
(12:40):
of time they spent on the internet. And if you
go on the Internet several times a day. At some
point you're probably going to be interacting with the strangers somehow, right,
So it's kind of desensitized them to that.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
So Facebook, I can't remember when it was, maybe five
six years ago. Now, Meta bought Oculus. Is it Oculus?
I think it's called And the whole the whole premise
of oculus is that it can be relational, highly relate
relational through headphones where sensories perception can increase, where you
(13:16):
can actually physically or I don't even it's physically but
touchy touch uh in the in the they bought it
when it was kind of in its infancy. But the
whole purpose some people think the whole purpose is to
get where you can do the capability even do pornography,
that is that is actually real with with the with
(13:40):
the right. And remember we're looking we're talking about big
smartphones now you know that kind of look look like that,
but in the future that they're probably gonna look like this.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah. Well, and Meta already has those Meta glasses. I
don't know if you've seen those, which.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
I never know if somebody is doing, you know, doing
something in front of Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
So one of my actually side note, Trey Ogden, the
UFC lightweight that I trained with at a marathon MMA,
he wears metaglasses when he corners fighters now and so
you get like a front row view of the whole
process of him, Oh, you're getting ready and going all
(14:23):
the way through and then him corner it. So it's
actually pretty cool. So everybody who thinks I'm anti technology,
I'm not. There's a lot of cool uses for it, right,
you know.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
But and folks, I just want to remind I did
I did not introduce Kevin with some of the other
things that he has. He has a master's in psychology,
which so he understands this not only from an investigatory
point of view, but he understands it in theory and practices.
And he's also a stud so he's in Brazilian jitsu
and all that kind of stuff. So he's a and
(14:54):
I've had the privilege of knowing him for quite some time.
So if we get if we talk about what the
quickly the future, because I think it's important for people
to see this is where it's going to go.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
The physical reality is there's going to be it's going
to be relational in which you can have that sensory
all the senses perhaps where you're actually involved in sexual
acts that that may occur, and that is that was
I don't want to put I don't want to I
gotta be careful here because I don't know what the
(15:29):
intent was with for Meta to own this, but certainly
there is a lot of money to be made in
it someday.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a possibility. And as kids start
using virtual reality and predators use it more and they're
able to connect with each other in these virtual worlds,
the idea of engaging in some kind of virtual sex
(15:56):
act with a child is absolutely a possible ability. And
with as realistic as this stuff is, getting, the psychological
damage of being victimized in virtual reality versus being victimized
in real life is going to get closer and closer
and closer to the same thing, right, And so obviously
(16:20):
there's differences. There's not any actual physical damage necessarily, but
the emotional attachment and the emotional victimization is still there,
and so you're going to start to see trauma and
PTSD like symptoms from kids if they're victimized, even in
like a virtual reality world.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
Sure, because the addiction level is just the dope and
merging system that has been over stimilized by this.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Well, and like you know this and law enforcement, we
started to realize that using scenario based training was the
best way to train law enforcement officers to make sure
they reacted appropriately under stress. Well, that's because your brain
doesn't really know the difference between real and fake, and
so if you put somebody through a scenario and a
virtual world, your brain reacts as if it's real, which
(17:10):
is why it's good training to then go out into
the field. Well, when you put a child into a
virtual reality world and somebody victimizes them, their brain doesn't
necessarily know that it's a virtual reality world, and so
they're going to experience some of the same trauma responses.
And so that's just something that we have to be
aware of. And so to me, what I think parents
(17:30):
need to understand is that you're not really looking for
the stranger. You're not looking for the external contact from
an unknown person. What you're looking for is behavioral shifts
in your child. So as a parent, it's to the
(17:50):
point now where you're not going to be able to
prevent your child from being in contact with strangers. All
the time. Right, you can intervene, you can try, you
can do your best, but it's likely not going to happen.
Your child's going to be involved on the internet with
a stranger at some point. So what you have to
(18:10):
look for is not necessarily the device usage. I don't
think the device itself is the danger. Now we'll talk
later on about having phones and stuff in school, and
that's different topic. But the danger is the isolation, excuse me,
the isolation and the secrecy, right, And so the phone
(18:33):
is just the mechanism. So when you see the behavioral
shift in your kids, that's when you know that you
need to get involved and start looking at devices, looking
into who they've been talking to, et cetera. Because if
you can identify the behavioral shifts early on, that's when
you can insert yourself into the grooming process to prevent
it from going it's full full circle. Does that make sense?
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Yeah? Absolutely? Can we in some time talking about because
I want people to fully understand the grooming capabilities today
in the digital arena, and so can you explain what
the progression typically looks like in digitals? Can you kind
of go over maybe a you know not I don't
(19:17):
want to jeopardize any former cases or anything, but maybe
try to give me some sort of progression that typically
that you typically see in these cases from a daily
you know, or weekly interaction or how often do they
try to do it in order to have that predation.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, so you know, stage one for a predator is
typically target selection. Right, these guys have turned it into
a science. We've talked about that before. I mean they're
they're using literally using the scientific method to experiment with
grooming techniques, and then they get together via their telegram
(19:56):
group and they talk about what worked and what didn't work,
and then they come up with hypotheses and they try
new techniques and then they come back and they evaluate.
So they're using the scientific process to figure out the
best way to groom kids. And so through a lot
of my undercover chat work, I've picked up on, you know,
(20:16):
this pattern where stage one is they select targets based
on emotional dysregulation is kind of how I'll refer to it.
So when a kid is not able to regulate their
emotions very well, and they're talking about things like, you know,
(20:37):
they have depression, or man, I hate myself or nobody
gets me, or my mom and dad are such assholes, right,
and like they give those indicators of trouble at home
and an inability to regulate emotion, those are usually the
ones that these offenders go after. They're not stumbling randomly
(21:00):
to victims. Which is why I also tell parents that
if you can create a confident child who has boundaries,
you can be pretty sure that your kid's going to
be safe without you doing a whole lot of intervention
because that type of child is not typically a target
(21:22):
because they don't want to deal with that type of
pushback if you're an involved father. They don't want to
deal with an involved father. They want they want somebody
who is struggling and who doesn't have specifically a father figure,
which is a whole other topic, but specifically a father
figure in their life. So they go through this target
(21:45):
selection process and then once they've picked somebody typically you
know on like a gaming platform or a discord server,
excuse me, they will start the trust building and what
I call like a identity construction phase. So they're going
(22:08):
to create this persona that's calibrated specifically to that child.
So this child struggles with depression, so I'm going to
be the one that's also had depression and I can
help walk you through how to overcome some of those things, right,
or the you know, well, you don't have a dad
(22:29):
in your life. I didn't have a dad growing up either,
and so maybe I can kind of be, you know,
like a guy you can talk to about things, right,
And so they create this identity excuse me, and over
time the child starts to realize like, wow, nobody listens
(22:52):
to me this, but this guy does, or yeah, he
understands my mental health struggles. And so the offenders are
exploiting essentially the neurobiology of adolescent attachment. And so it's
(23:12):
it's methodical. And then the next step is they jump
into feeling whatever that child's needs are, you know, lonely.
This person's always there, unappreciated. He's telling her she's beautiful, right,
et cetera, et cetera. And then you move into isolation,
(23:35):
which is stage four, I think is what we're on,
and they subtly try to undermine a child's other relationships.
So how come you weren't able to play the game yesterday?
You know? Oh my mom wouldn't let me. Oh man,
she sounds awful, you know. I wouldn't ever do that
(23:57):
to you. And then you move into sensitization, so they
maybe share porn or engage in discuss it discussions about
sex as a joke to desensitize the kid and to
see if the kid's open to discussing that kind of
a thing. And then stage six is they move into
(24:19):
asking for whatever it is that they want. If you
trust me or if you loved me, you would send
me X y Z. And then after they have what
they want, they move into the final stage, which is
kind of about maintenance and control. So it's the idea
that I have what I want now, and if you
don't continue doing what I want, I'm going to expose
(24:41):
all of this to your family and friends. Right, And
so you know from stage one to seven, and different
experts will tell you there's a different number of stages,
but it's pretty much that same pattern. They just might
break it up differently. But that occurs so much faster
(25:02):
today because of technology. So you can go through all
seven of those stages in one day, and I've had
that happen before, Whereas, like you mentioned two thousand and eight,
it would take a year potentially to get a child
through all those stages, and you had to be more
careful because you were part of that community.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
And so now you can pick on you don't even
you could you could purposefully pick people from outside your community,
I mean.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Outside of your country. Yeah, you know. And and so
that's the danger of it now is that, you know,
the old grooming model was very linear. Nowadays it's it's
very much not I mean it's and your child isn't
just exposed to the one pedophile that happened to live
(25:51):
in a fifty mile radius of your house. Now it's
your child's exposed to literally every pedophile on the internet
if they happened to be in the wrong place at
the wrong time.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Yeah, is there a you know, in law enforcement, we
have we build profiles for different types of criminals that
may occur. Is have you found that there is a
general profile for these kinds of offenders?
Speaker 3 (26:16):
No white men is the majority?
Speaker 5 (26:22):
Would you? Are you guessing?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know, and I've
had I've had plenty of of of black offenders, and
and uh, I guess Hispanic offenders. I would Hispanics have
a very high rate also.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
Of technically considered white.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
But exactly and That's that's why I say that I
would probably lump all that together. But the uh, the
overall profile is is so difficult to build because you'll
see offenders from poverty stricken areas, You'll see them from
affluent areas. You'll see doctors, you'll see lawyers, you'll see
(27:06):
construction workers, You'll see you know, guys who are very
athletic and guys who are very out of shape, and
it just it's all, It runs the gamut. The only
consistent thread is that it's largely white men, but females
have had a huge uptick, especially female teachers, in victimizing students,
(27:34):
which is kind of an interesting topic that needs to
be you know, looked at a little bit more at depth.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
Yeah, friends, we're talking with retired detective and child predator
investigator Kevin Cronisher about how smartphones have changed the threat
landscape facing children across the country. We're going to take
a break. Please stay with us. You're listening to America's
Criminologists on k m ET radio and streaming everywhere. Stay tuned, Hi, folks,
(28:22):
Doctor Curry Myers here to let you know that my
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every Tuesday at one pm is a former State Trooper
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I'll have guests, news and my insights as an applied
criminologist throughout the one hour show. So criminals and the
(28:42):
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show is directed at you, America's criminologist Every Tuesday at
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Speaker 5 (30:59):
My free This is doctor Curry Myers, America's criminologist. I
have a new sponsor for my show. I mean Real Resilience.
That's our ab L transformative program helping inmates prepare for
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Resilience teaches practical tools to build resilience. It's really an
(31:20):
important tool, Real Resilience, because reentry isn't just released, it's
a second chance done right. All right, Welcome back to
America's criminologists. Please remember that you can view my work
on substack doctor Currymeers dot substack dot com. And hey,
(31:41):
if you're interested in my work as a Catholic apologist,
which I also do and speaker, please check out my
work on substack at Saint Michael's group dot substack dot com.
And if you're interested in hearing me speak, I speak
often on the topic of seeing Christ through the darkness.
I'm happy to come speaking an organization or your parish.
(32:02):
You can book me through Catholic Speakers dot com. Just
got back from the University Idaho, sponsored by the Saint
Augustine Center out there, and we had a sold out
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to be the opening speaker for that. We had over
twenty five hundred people fill in the basketball arena there,
(32:24):
so it was wonderful, So feel free to check out
my page. We're continuing conversation today with the detective retired
detective Kevin Kronisser, who spent years investigating crime against children
and tracking how technology has changed the way predators operate.
You can check him out and Guardian Training Solutions Kevin.
What's that web website.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Guardian Training Solutions dot com.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
You know where you can google him all kinds of it.
He is on does a lot of interviews. I've had
him on this show before, I had him on The
lou Desmond Show before when I've guest hosted there. But
he's also done a lot of podcasts and you can
see his work there. I highly suggest you check him
out because there's things that you learn each time when
(33:09):
he does this, because he's just a wealth of knowledge.
So before the break, we talked about how smart smart
smartphones have dramatically increased exposure risk for the kids. So
what I'd like to do is kind of turn to
the next question in this second half, what family schools
and policymakers, what we can actually try to do about
(33:29):
this in the future. I know there's I'm a federalist,
so we want to be careful on government overreach and
all those kinds of things. But at the same time,
we have to have good parenting, that's number one. But
there needs to be some checks and balances, and quite frankly,
in my opinion, it seems to me that it's had
(33:51):
to make a difference when more and more states have
now put some regulatory into effect. When it comes to
pornography where you have to ask for you have to
do a user name, or have to do a date,
I think is what they do. You know, data to birth.
You have to put information in there, you know, to
be able to view online porn basically, and I would
(34:17):
be interested in the study. It's got to make a
difference because people want to hide in the shadows. They
don't want to they don't want to have to put
information about themselves into that kind of material. So the
issue becomes kevin in my opinion, there's got to be
a back end into anything or quick changes on little
things on the internet, and maybe a website that all
(34:37):
of a sudden takes them out of that. You know
that the host website can do. I mean, there's many
things that could be done. So let's kind of get
into this framing, if you will, on what to do
in the future.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Yeah, my first and foremost goal recently here in Kansas
where I'm at, was to help pass a bill that
restricted cell phone usage in schools from bell to bell.
(35:15):
And initially, you know, because I'm just like you, I'm
very much a the less the government is involved, the
better we all are kind of a mindset. But the
reality is is that the data is so overwhelmingly negative
(35:37):
when it comes to cell phone usage in schools that
that seemed like the place to start, because in my experience,
there's two high risk locations that a predator oftentimes reaches
out to children via devices. The first one is in
(35:58):
their bedroom late at night after parents have gone to bed,
when a child's not really thinking correctly, they're tired, maybe
they're emotional, they're stressed, right, And the second one is
at school, and the reason for that is kind of threefold.
Kids have more freedom at school, I think than parents realize,
(36:22):
and it's very easy for a kid to run off.
Hey I need to use the bathroom. Hey I'm gonna
skip gym. Class, whatever the case is, and go hide
out with their cell phone somewhere and communicate with a predator.
The second thing is that predators know that there's no
parents around while a child's at school, and the teachers
(36:42):
are too overwhelmingly busy to police cell phone usage. And
then the third thing is communicating with a child while
they're at school gives them access to victims. And I
don't think people realize the number of victims that have
been created by another victim. So, and what I mean
(37:03):
by that is, you know, predator victimizes a child, that
child goes to school, predator reaches out to that child
and convinces them to, hey, introduce me to little Susie,
your friend. And then now he has Little Susie's information
and he's chatting with her.
Speaker 5 (37:21):
And we saw that manifestation in the Epstein cases where
victims would introduce other girls, mainly girls. Of course this
is more of a physical relationship that was trans transpiring,
but it happens. Yeah, same concept, right.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah, And so so the schools, and to be to
be quite honest with you, the schools were one of
the places where I realized we could actually get regulations
involved fairly easily in schools, whereas I don't believe we
(38:01):
should be regulating how parents parent their kids. I don't
believe we should be, you know, involving ourselves inside of
people's homes. So I thought to myself, like, what's the
low hanging fruit here, and regulations in school was, in
my opinion, the easiest low hanging fruit to go after
(38:24):
that would produce the greatest results. And so it actually
started with school districts telling schools that they were now
required to create some kind of their own restriction plan
for cell phones. And that worked to some extent, but
(38:48):
it didn't really because what most of them ended up
doing was saying, Okay, your phone can't be out while
you're in class, right right, but we're still there, yea?
Speaker 5 (39:01):
And teacher was this was this subjected just to public
schools or did it pack?
Speaker 3 (39:06):
No? So the bill actually and I have mixed feelings
about this, but the bill actually requires public schools as well. Yeah,
so private was private?
Speaker 5 (39:16):
Religious schools?
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (39:18):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, and and you know, we
should not think that this doesn't occur in private schools
or in religious schools, because it happens everywhere.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
And I struggled a little bit with that, as I'm
sure you kind of do with the idea that that
we're allowing the government to essentially go into a private
school and say hey, you have to do X, Y
and Z. The public schools I was more okay with
because they're publicly funded, right, and it's it's one of
(39:53):
those things where it's like, you do you got to
you gotta do that. The public schools are way more
tied in with the government and the private schools, right,
But with the private schools, the problem is still the same.
And I didn't think that they were going to be
able to get the private or get the private school
portion of the bill passed, and it still passed.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
So anyway, now does this go through K through twelve? Okay?
So what was there? Just one second while I was
thinking about so, is there any was there any pushback
from teachers that are in the upper grades, let's say,
junior high to high school because some teachers actually will
have people do research using their phones or laptops in
(40:41):
the schools, And was there any pushback there?
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Not really, because a majority of the students still had
access to whatever laptop or.
Speaker 5 (40:54):
Uh okay that might be tethered there.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah, but the school gave them, so it was it
was really just about the phones, the unfettered access, right.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
I didn't mean I just want to know.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
No, that's a good point, you know. The biggest the
biggest pushback that we got was from the folks that
the argument was local control the school. The school knows
its community and it should have the ultimate say on
how to implement these changes. Right, and to a certain extent,
I agree. But the problem was is that we tried
(41:29):
that and and we didn't really see results because kids
were still figuring out ways to get their phones. And
the studies are showing too that even if my cell
phone is not sitting here on my desk in front
of me, even if it's in my backpack, if I
have the ability, the physical ability to grab my phone,
(41:50):
then my attention is constantly split all day long. Different
if your phone is locked up in a locker somewhere
and you know you don't have access to it, you
forget about it until the end of the day. And
so even those policies, as well meeting as they were,
those policies were failing to address some of the other concerns,
which were the mental health concerns. And test scores plummeting,
(42:13):
and kids, you know, ADHD type symptoms from feeling like
they're constantly have a divided attention. And so it just
it wasn't working, and so something else need to be done.
And so the Bell de Belle cell phone ban passed,
and I had the privilege of testifying in front of
(42:35):
the Kansas House Education Committee and the Kansas Senate Education Committee,
and I basically told them what I just told you.
I said that schools are a right place for grooming
and for predator communication. And I gave them those same
three reasons why. And I just said that, you know,
(42:56):
I'm only speaking from a from a law enforcement perspective.
I'm by no means trying to address, you know, the
the psychological issues, though there are many that are stemming
from the cell phone addictions and stuff like that. And
it seemed to have a pretty profound impact on them,
because I again I don't think teachers, parents, you know, coaches,
(43:22):
anybody who is responsible for children. I don't think they
realized the extent of this problem. Yeah, and once once
I was able to kind of explain it to them,
I think I think it resonated with them and to
their credit. I got a lot of follow up questions
and emails from committee members that wanted to know a
little bit more about what I was seeing, and so
(43:45):
that was that was one of the one of the
number one things that that I thought, Like step one,
we got kids spend a majority of their lives nine
months out of the year in school, So if we
can target that one space and make it cell phone free,
we're going to be eliminating a lot of the potential
(44:06):
contact between predators and children.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
Yeah, well, we have to remember too that that we're
already addicted to our phones just in normal use. Certainly
children are too. But when it goes back to this
what occurs, what occurs in the in the in the
mind of somebody goes back to the the thought when
(44:30):
you're when you're exposed to something earlier than what you should,
you know, especially sexually. Let's say you're fifth sixth grade
and exposed to something, then it does change how you think.
It does. It does make you want to try to
reach out for that for that phone more because you've
(44:51):
been addicted in another way. So the dopeminergic system is
actually switching those synapses you know, inside your mind to
make you focused, hyper focus on on the lust side
of it in order to satisfy your you know, your
needs at that time. So it becomes even a more
(45:13):
heightened sense of need to be able to grab that phone.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Right. Yeah, for sure. It almost becomes kind of a
panic the first the first period of time where they
don't have access to it. It's like this panic of
like I'm missing a limb kind of.
Speaker 5 (45:30):
Yeah, any feedback yet from it has gone into effect. Now,
I'll have to double check maybe July first or something.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
I think that it's going to go into effect in
this coming uh school year. And and it was you know,
and it wasn't just me. I mean, I don't want
to make it sound like I got up there and
got this bill passed. There were dozens of experts from
every possible field. Uh. Susan Dunaway, she's a neurotherapist. She
(46:02):
talked about the danger of cell phone usage in schools,
and like, when I was talking about how they're they're constantly,
they constantly have divided attention even if their phone isn't
in front of them. She was the one that brought
that up because that's you know, obviously her brain function
as her Forte Kim Whitman with Screen Free School's USA
(46:30):
was fantastic And anyway, there's a whole slew of experts
that got up and testified on behalf of this bill,
and so it was a really a really positive thing
in my mind. I know there's some people that aren't
happy with it, but you know, I think ultimately it's
going to be a good thing. So that was step
one for me was getting cell phones out of schools
(46:50):
in between the bells. And then you know, the second
thing for me is like I like I mentioned earlier,
is parents understanding better, a understanding the problem better and
be paying attention to their children's emotional behaviors their ability
(47:13):
to regulate their emotions, because a lot of things can
just be written up to like hormones, right, But the
reality is is that if you know your child well enough,
and this is just involved parenting, right, if you know
your child well enough, you will get a hunch about
behaviors that are occurring because of something that's happening in
(47:38):
their life. Right. And so that to me is the
most important thing parents can do because you're not going
to be able to keep up to date on all
of the technology it's going to continue to outpace parents,
it outpaces law enforcement. And so the best thing that
you can do is get to know your child better
and to pay attention to their to their behaviors, and
(48:01):
keep phones out of their damn bedrooms.
Speaker 5 (48:04):
Yeah, yeah, I think you have to.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
You have to.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
You have to gather them in the evening, yeah, and
say they're you know, put the phone in the basket,
you know for sure. And not only not only does
it it goes off, you know, turn it off because
the ability to track your phone, I mean phones can
be even turned off now and there's still tracking, you know,
(48:28):
So that that's which is amazing, and that kind of
brings up to this again with legislation there there are
always concerns about surveillance data collection tied to some of
the device restriction proposals that happened. How did you weigh
that balance is it? What kind of argument is it?
And how did you kind of satisfy that that's you know,
(48:52):
civil liberty approach there?
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Do you do? You mean.
Speaker 5 (48:56):
Privacy concerns like about people about government taking information from
the child's phone when it comes to data collection and
to be able to use for something else down the road. Yeah,
I mean it really doesn't do that, right, It just
it just takes away the phone. It's not like the.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Way the front out. Basically, what it looks like is
the child shows up the school with their phone. There's
a bank of lockers, they put it in a locker,
they shut it, they've got a key. At the end
of the day, they go back and get their phone
and they leave. Yeah, and so there's no nobody else
has any access to the phone either. And you know,
one of the biggest arguments was, well, you know, I
(49:37):
should be able to get a hold of my child
in an emergency, right and that as a parent, that
seems like something that.
Speaker 5 (49:43):
They're not at school. I mean, that's why you call
the school.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
And that and that was my answer was when you
are able to have unfettered access to to your own child,
which again I am one hundred percent opposed to the government,
you know, telling people how to raise their kids. But
when there's an emergency at school and you have three
(50:10):
hundred kids calling nine to one one instead of a
couple of teachers calling nine to one one, that overwhelms center. Right.
Then they start calling parents and parents start rushing to
the scene, which then causes a problem for responding officers,
(50:31):
And so I understand the initial thought like, well, if
there's an emergency, I should know, and I agree, but
it shouldn't. It shouldn't happen immediately because then it interferes
with the response to that emergency, right, And so in
my opinion, this almost makes a response to an emergency
(50:54):
more efficient because there's less potential conflicting information coming in.
People aren't showing up on stcene. For example, in Oleitha,
the school shooting that occurred, right, I can't remember if
this was. I can't remember how many years ago it was.
He just recently got sentenced. But a student at one
(51:16):
of the Oleifa school districts shot a school resource officer
and the it was the principal or the vice principal,
I can't remember exactly. I responded to that shooting, and
I couldn't get into the school the parking lot because
(51:37):
there were parents and the news and so it just
made me realize how difficult it is when you have
so many people involved in the handling of an emergency, Right,
you got three hundred kids trying to contact people anyway,
So I try to explain that to the parents too,
(51:58):
that it's not all is a great thing when your
child can reach you immediately during a problem.
Speaker 5 (52:04):
Well, another thing to be concerned about is if the
school is a soft target as well, and there are
going to be people that are going to set some incident,
could even be a school shooting, but the real reason
why they are going to do something is to have
a secondary issue that's going to happen, where it could
be a bombs or additional shooting that could happen. I mean,
(52:26):
you know, we're living in a world of terrorism right now.
We're at war in many cases. And I've done these
battlefield scenarios and urban sectors before and did that as
a defense contractor, and I've always been concerned with soft
targets being used for a secondary event. The first event
(52:47):
gathers people isn't the primary event. So people have to
understand that there could be secondary devices. And when I
was in the nineteen ninety three Federal Building courthouse bombing,
the shooting incident, he I mean, this is a long
time ago, and he had secondary devices. He had put
bombs down, time delay bombs, and gravitation bombs as you
(53:11):
walk by could go off. Those were all secondary devices
to go off anytime after the event had finished.
Speaker 3 (53:21):
For sure, for sure, And that's an example, that's a
great example of and nobody. I don't think people really
think along those lines, right. And then another argument was, well,
my child has a specific health issue and they need
to be able to get a hold of me if
(53:41):
they start having these health issues. And my response is
kind of the same. You're not gonna be able to
really do anything from twenty minutes away, so they need
to go to the school nurse and go through that
process and then the school can contact you. And then
the next argument was, well, my child's device controls his insulin, right,
The bill has carveouts for carve outs for situations like that.
(54:06):
So if your child's cell phone controls is insulin, they're
not going to take it away from him, but there's
going to be other restrictions like, hey man, you can
have it to control your insulin, but if you're on it,
we're going to check to make sure that's what you're doing.
Kind of a thing. But they have they have those,
you know, those those exceptions to the rules. So anyway, yeah, overall,
(54:29):
I think it was it was a great thing that
the that the bill passed, and I think that the
opponents to the bill, as time goes on, they'll see
the benefit of it, and then the negative things I
don't think are going to come to fruition, or at
least not as often as they think that they will. Yep.
Speaker 5 (54:50):
So heaven, we were running out of time.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (54:53):
But in twenty second response, twenty years from now, what
are we going to be seeing when it comes to
this on the technology.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
Artificial intelligence is going to make it to where we
don't know the difference between rail and fake and a
majority of the aspects of our lives, and so I
think that we're going to be seeing situations where the
sex stortion levels are going to skyrocket, especially for teen
boys who get tricked into thinking that somebody is a
(55:24):
teenage girl. Yeah, and it's really not. And we're going
to see the grooming process go through a transition because
pedophiles are going to be able to pretend to be kids.
Speaker 5 (55:36):
And Kevin, amazing stuff. Thanks for joining us today and
sharing experience from the front lines on protecting kids.
Speaker 3 (55:43):
Yes, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5 (55:45):
My pleasure, Doctor Curry Meyers. Here in America's criminologists, stay safe,
stay informed, to remember public safety begins long before the
first police call is ever made. Stay safe.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Carl still shoots the cattle's wage, just touching, never as
a page a man, because shadows the secrets light. Doctor
Curry's NS couts through the scout amer I can scram
anologist calling the mild.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
Sails of the law.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
In the atmosphere, gangles and crimes break in the change
foot fos to start do the pase
Col steal susa's Light Justice listening him as a faith
Shadows a Secrets Line, Doctor Curry.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Last the Sky Americans Graminologist Colin Sales of the Law
in the Anlacy's a Crime Freak.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
And Change Bruce.
Speaker 4 (00:35):
And here's America's Criminologists, Doctor Curry Myers.
Speaker 5 (00:42):
Thank you, guess comy, sir, welcome to America's Chronologists. I'm
doctor Curry Myers, retired major county sheriff and former special
agent and state trooper. Also spent fifteen years in the
world of academia, so you can forgive me for that,
serving as a school dean and as a professor teaching criminology, leadership,
organizational behavior, all those kinds of things. This is a
(01:03):
show where we'll talk about crime culture and the foundations
that sustain civil society. As you know, I talk about
the three important pillars, as I say, of faith, family,
and formation. Because crime doesn't begin in the streets. It
begins when those foundations are weaken and generally it begins
at home. The good news is is it starts in
(01:24):
the home, so we can build things up from the home.
And as always, if you'd like to explore more about
my program, my work on applied criminology, research papers, policy papers,
all my interviews, anything like that at all. You can
visit my substack page at doctor Curriemeyers dot substack dot com.
Please check it out. This segment of America's criminologists is
(01:47):
brought to you by Real Resilience. That's our ee L.
It's a transformative program helping inmates prepare for successful reentry.
Using inspirational films and guy discussion. Real Resilience teaches practical
tools to build resilience, strengthen relationships, and restore hope for
(02:08):
the future. It's real learning through real stories where positive
choices are modeled, not just preached. Real Resilience because re
entry isn't just release, it's a second chance done right. Okay.
As you know, my opening riff is associated with what
we're going to talk about for the day. Today's a doozy.
Today we're going to talk about something that affects in
(02:30):
nearly every family in America, and that's smartphones and our children. Now,
for years, we've heard the argument that phones are just tools,
neutral devices, harmless technology. But law enforcement officers, investigators and
parents across the country knows something very different is happening.
Quite frankly, it's not good. Smartphones are not just communication
(02:54):
tools anymore. They're access points, access to strangers, access to predators,
access to content. Children were never meant to navigate these alone.
We have literally open front doors of our homes to evil.
Just opened it. Welcome aboard, Come see all my family,
(03:20):
Come on in. That's what we've been able to do today.
And here's the reality. The risk environment for kids today
is dramatically different than it was ten, fifteen years ago.
I dare say it's dramatically different than it was just
five years ago. What used to require physical proximity now
requires only a username, and I don't even know if
you need that anymore. With experts, what used to take months,
(03:44):
maybe a year of grooming twenty five years ago can
take weeks, sometimes days, maybe even hours. And what used
to be rare is now routine. So the question isn't
whether technology is advancing it, as of course we can't
stop it. Technology is something we have to embrace. We
(04:06):
have to use it every day. AI is something we
have to use, get used to it. But we have
to understand there is a dark side of anything, and
they're certainly a dark side of this because protecting children
it's not about politics, it's about responsibility. And today we're
going to talk with someone who has spent years on
(04:27):
the front lines investigating crimes against children. Retired detective and
child predator expert Kevin Kronister really understands what's happening out
there on the street, and he knows what the data
is about. He's testified in front of legislatures and those
practical solutions are starting to emerge across the country and
(04:50):
he's been behind some of that legislation. Retired Detective Kevin
Cronister spent years chasing child pedophiles and now he's focused
on consultation and work in the child in the world
of child predation. He's available for hire if companies want
to reach out to him and do so. He also
has a company called Guardian Training Solutions. Friends, this is
(05:11):
an excellent training uh not only online but physical training
that they do for law enforcements. So if you're a
law enforcement practitioner and you're listening, check up on Guardian
Training Solutions and see what Kevin and his team is doing.
There at some remarkable stuff. Kevin, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Thank you, Doctor Mars I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 5 (05:34):
Good to see you as always, my friend. So, yes, Kevin,
your years of experience investigating child predators, it's dark, it's difficult,
it has not been easy. You have you have backlogs,
any any investigator in this has backlog cases that could
be in the thousands. Has smartphone access changed the risk
(05:58):
environment for kids compare to just five years ago? We
already we know it's done ten fifteen years ago, but
just in the last couple of years, how much has
it changed?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah? One hundred percent. I mean, you know, like you
said in two thousand and eight, right, we're talking about,
you know, predators having to wait for kids to log
on from the family computer, you know, to a chat room.
Up until, you know, five years ago, kids still had
to be somewhat present on social media for predators to
(06:29):
be able to access them. And you fast forward to
today and everything that a child does digitally is somehow
connected to the Internet and some type of a social aspect.
So I think you and I on one of the
previous shows talked about massive multi player online role playing
(06:53):
games mmrpgs.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
And an example would be like.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Roadblocks you have Fortnite, those kinds of those kinds of games.
And so parents today are thinking, you know, oh, you know,
my child, I don't give him Snapchat, I don't give
him Instagram, and so he's not on social media. So
he's you know, I'm doing the right things. And they
(07:21):
don't realize that a lot of the games and messaging
apps that are even specifically designed for kids have vulnerabilities.
And you know, these these online role playing games. All
it takes is for somebody to send a direct message
or talk to them over the mic and say, you know, hey,
(07:46):
I really enjoy playing with you. Why don't we hop
back on tomorrow at six o'clock. And then they start
meeting up regularly to play this video game together. And
that's how that grooming process starts, right and so and
then you mentioned with the advent of AI. You know,
AI five years ago was just a you know, just
(08:10):
just kind of appearing on the scene. I mean, it's
been around for a while, but it really started making
an impact in things like our child exploitation investigations just
five years ago. And as AI improves, I mean it
improves week to week, you know, and and AI is
being used by child predators. The kids don't know who
(08:32):
they're really talking to. The person appears to be another child.
They talk like a child, they interact like a child.
They have all these photos of them as a child
interacting with other children. And the reality is is that
it's you know, some forty year old dude in a
basement who's using AI to create this fake persona. And
(08:55):
it's just the advent of all these different technologies all
at one over the last five years has really made
it difficult for parents to keep up, I think, especially
parents who are not necessarily technologically inclined themselves.
Speaker 5 (09:13):
Yeah, and it's not just improving each year, but it's
also learning. I mean, it's learning behaviors, right, and it's
learning what I can do differently or better. I'm sure
they're learning how to evade being shut down. I mean,
you know these are the It's it's weird how you
know it can it's it's it's always going to be
(09:36):
one probably you know, fifteen steps ahead of law enforcement,
just because it's gonna it's going to learn our parents
misunderstanding today how quickly predators can reach. It seems like,
you know, all the kids are still on Fortnite. I mean,
it's a I don't know, I'm you know, when I
ask around, of course I'm nobody. I'm in my sixties
(09:57):
and I have grandchildren, of course, but Fortnite seems to
be the the big one roadblocks, you know, is it
is it is a regional interest in different types of
of these communication communication platforms, and it's different to be found,
or is it.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
I don't I don't think so. I mean I think
that you know, for the most part, the games that
are the most popular or they're they're the most popular everywhere.
I do know that you have the ability in a
lot of these games to play with people from your area,
right or create regional groups, and so there's there's definitely
(10:39):
that that component. I think one of the biggest things
that parents misunderstand about the current technology landscape is that
they're still running. They're still operating with like a two
thousand and five threat model right where they're like, don't
talk to strangers on the internet, right and make sure
(11:01):
that you know you aren't given out your information and
that kind of thing, which is not a bad thing
to be aware of. But that's not really the problem
in twenty twenty five, because the reality is is that
in twenty twenty five, most of your information has already
been spread on the internet, right, and so it's pretty
easy to access, and so they're believing that their child
(11:30):
is probably going to encounter something that's obviously wrong, right,
Like that's the mindset is, like, you know, well, you
might get a creepy message right from some guy you
don't know, and that'll be like a signal that this
is a bad thing. And I think they also misunderstand
the speed at which this happens. You know, it used
(11:52):
to be that, like you mentioned, it would take a
long time for this grooming process to set in, and
so parents had a window of time to recognize that
this was a problem and to intercede before the grooming
process ran its course. I've had cases that went from
first contact in the morning to a physical meetup by
(12:14):
the afternoon because of how easily technology facilitates the grooming process,
and so parents I think they kind of underestimate the
speed at which this happens too. And there's no obvious
stranger on the internet anymore, because kids are becoming kind
of desensitized to interacting with strangers because of the amount
(12:40):
of time they spent on the internet. And if you
go on the Internet several times a day. At some
point you're probably going to be interacting with the strangers somehow, right,
So it's kind of desensitized them to that.
Speaker 5 (12:53):
So Facebook, I can't remember when it was, maybe five
six years ago. Now, Meta bought Oculus. Is it Oculus?
I think it's called And the whole the whole premise
of oculus is that it can be relational, highly relate
relational through headphones where sensories perception can increase, where you
(13:16):
can actually physically or I don't even it's physically but
touchy touch uh in the in the they bought it
when it was kind of in its infancy. But the
whole purpose some people think the whole purpose is to
get where you can do the capability even do pornography,
that is that is actually real with with the with
(13:40):
the right. And remember we're looking we're talking about big
smartphones now you know that kind of look look like that,
but in the future that they're probably gonna look like this.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
Yeah. Well, and Meta already has those Meta glasses. I
don't know if you've seen those, which.
Speaker 5 (13:58):
I never know if somebody is doing, you know, doing
something in front of Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
So one of my actually side note, Trey Ogden, the
UFC lightweight that I trained with at a marathon MMA,
he wears metaglasses when he corners fighters now and so
you get like a front row view of the whole
process of him, Oh, you're getting ready and going all
(14:23):
the way through and then him corner it. So it's
actually pretty cool. So everybody who thinks I'm anti technology,
I'm not. There's a lot of cool uses for it, right,
you know.
Speaker 5 (14:32):
But and folks, I just want to remind I did
I did not introduce Kevin with some of the other
things that he has. He has a master's in psychology,
which so he understands this not only from an investigatory
point of view, but he understands it in theory and practices.
And he's also a stud so he's in Brazilian jitsu
and all that kind of stuff. So he's a and
(14:54):
I've had the privilege of knowing him for quite some time.
So if we get if we talk about what the
quickly the future, because I think it's important for people
to see this is where it's going to go.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (15:08):
The physical reality is there's going to be it's going
to be relational in which you can have that sensory
all the senses perhaps where you're actually involved in sexual
acts that that may occur, and that is that was
I don't want to put I don't want to I
gotta be careful here because I don't know what the
(15:29):
intent was with for Meta to own this, but certainly
there is a lot of money to be made in
it someday.
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah, yeah, that's definitely a possibility. And as kids start
using virtual reality and predators use it more and they're
able to connect with each other in these virtual worlds,
the idea of engaging in some kind of virtual sex
(15:56):
act with a child is absolutely a possible ability. And
with as realistic as this stuff is, getting, the psychological
damage of being victimized in virtual reality versus being victimized
in real life is going to get closer and closer
and closer to the same thing, right, And so obviously
(16:20):
there's differences. There's not any actual physical damage necessarily, but
the emotional attachment and the emotional victimization is still there,
and so you're going to start to see trauma and
PTSD like symptoms from kids if they're victimized, even in
like a virtual reality world.
Speaker 5 (16:39):
Sure, because the addiction level is just the dope and
merging system that has been over stimilized by this.
Speaker 3 (16:46):
Well, and like you know this and law enforcement, we
started to realize that using scenario based training was the
best way to train law enforcement officers to make sure
they reacted appropriately under stress. Well, that's because your brain
doesn't really know the difference between real and fake, and
so if you put somebody through a scenario and a
virtual world, your brain reacts as if it's real, which
(17:10):
is why it's good training to then go out into
the field. Well, when you put a child into a
virtual reality world and somebody victimizes them, their brain doesn't
necessarily know that it's a virtual reality world, and so
they're going to experience some of the same trauma responses.
And so that's just something that we have to be
aware of. And so to me, what I think parents
(17:30):
need to understand is that you're not really looking for
the stranger. You're not looking for the external contact from
an unknown person. What you're looking for is behavioral shifts
in your child. So as a parent, it's to the
(17:50):
point now where you're not going to be able to
prevent your child from being in contact with strangers. All
the time. Right, you can intervene, you can try, you
can do your best, but it's likely not going to happen.
Your child's going to be involved on the internet with
a stranger at some point. So what you have to
(18:10):
look for is not necessarily the device usage. I don't
think the device itself is the danger. Now we'll talk
later on about having phones and stuff in school, and
that's different topic. But the danger is the isolation, excuse me,
the isolation and the secrecy, right, And so the phone
(18:33):
is just the mechanism. So when you see the behavioral
shift in your kids, that's when you know that you
need to get involved and start looking at devices, looking
into who they've been talking to, et cetera. Because if
you can identify the behavioral shifts early on, that's when
you can insert yourself into the grooming process to prevent
it from going it's full full circle. Does that make sense?
Speaker 5 (18:57):
Yeah? Absolutely? Can we in some time talking about because
I want people to fully understand the grooming capabilities today
in the digital arena, and so can you explain what
the progression typically looks like in digitals? Can you kind
of go over maybe a you know not I don't
(19:17):
want to jeopardize any former cases or anything, but maybe
try to give me some sort of progression that typically
that you typically see in these cases from a daily
you know, or weekly interaction or how often do they
try to do it in order to have that predation.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Yeah, so you know, stage one for a predator is
typically target selection. Right, these guys have turned it into
a science. We've talked about that before. I mean they're
they're using literally using the scientific method to experiment with
grooming techniques, and then they get together via their telegram
(19:56):
group and they talk about what worked and what didn't work,
and then they come up with hypotheses and they try
new techniques and then they come back and they evaluate.
So they're using the scientific process to figure out the
best way to groom kids. And so through a lot
of my undercover chat work, I've picked up on, you know,
(20:16):
this pattern where stage one is they select targets based
on emotional dysregulation is kind of how I'll refer to it.
So when a kid is not able to regulate their
emotions very well, and they're talking about things like, you know,
(20:37):
they have depression, or man, I hate myself or nobody
gets me, or my mom and dad are such assholes, right,
and like they give those indicators of trouble at home
and an inability to regulate emotion, those are usually the
ones that these offenders go after. They're not stumbling randomly
(21:00):
to victims. Which is why I also tell parents that
if you can create a confident child who has boundaries,
you can be pretty sure that your kid's going to
be safe without you doing a whole lot of intervention
because that type of child is not typically a target
(21:22):
because they don't want to deal with that type of
pushback if you're an involved father. They don't want to
deal with an involved father. They want they want somebody
who is struggling and who doesn't have specifically a father figure,
which is a whole other topic, but specifically a father
figure in their life. So they go through this target
(21:45):
selection process and then once they've picked somebody typically you
know on like a gaming platform or a discord server,
excuse me, they will start the trust building and what
I call like a identity construction phase. So they're going
(22:08):
to create this persona that's calibrated specifically to that child.
So this child struggles with depression, so I'm going to
be the one that's also had depression and I can
help walk you through how to overcome some of those things, right,
or the you know, well, you don't have a dad
(22:29):
in your life. I didn't have a dad growing up either,
and so maybe I can kind of be, you know,
like a guy you can talk to about things, right,
And so they create this identity excuse me, and over
time the child starts to realize like, wow, nobody listens
(22:52):
to me this, but this guy does, or yeah, he
understands my mental health struggles. And so the offenders are
exploiting essentially the neurobiology of adolescent attachment. And so it's
(23:12):
it's methodical. And then the next step is they jump
into feeling whatever that child's needs are, you know, lonely.
This person's always there, unappreciated. He's telling her she's beautiful, right,
et cetera, et cetera. And then you move into isolation,
(23:35):
which is stage four, I think is what we're on,
and they subtly try to undermine a child's other relationships.
So how come you weren't able to play the game yesterday?
You know? Oh my mom wouldn't let me. Oh man,
she sounds awful, you know. I wouldn't ever do that
(23:57):
to you. And then you move into sensitization, so they
maybe share porn or engage in discuss it discussions about
sex as a joke to desensitize the kid and to
see if the kid's open to discussing that kind of
a thing. And then stage six is they move into
(24:19):
asking for whatever it is that they want. If you
trust me or if you loved me, you would send
me X y Z. And then after they have what
they want, they move into the final stage, which is
kind of about maintenance and control. So it's the idea
that I have what I want now, and if you
don't continue doing what I want, I'm going to expose
(24:41):
all of this to your family and friends. Right, And
so you know from stage one to seven, and different
experts will tell you there's a different number of stages,
but it's pretty much that same pattern. They just might
break it up differently. But that occurs so much faster
(25:02):
today because of technology. So you can go through all
seven of those stages in one day, and I've had
that happen before, Whereas, like you mentioned two thousand and eight,
it would take a year potentially to get a child
through all those stages, and you had to be more
careful because you were part of that community.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
And so now you can pick on you don't even
you could you could purposefully pick people from outside your community,
I mean.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Outside of your country. Yeah, you know. And and so
that's the danger of it now is that, you know,
the old grooming model was very linear. Nowadays it's it's
very much not I mean it's and your child isn't
just exposed to the one pedophile that happened to live
(25:51):
in a fifty mile radius of your house. Now it's
your child's exposed to literally every pedophile on the internet
if they happened to be in the wrong place at
the wrong time.
Speaker 5 (26:02):
Yeah, is there a you know, in law enforcement, we
have we build profiles for different types of criminals that
may occur. Is have you found that there is a
general profile for these kinds of offenders?
Speaker 3 (26:16):
No white men is the majority?
Speaker 5 (26:22):
Would you? Are you guessing?
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And you know, and I've
had I've had plenty of of of black offenders, and
and uh, I guess Hispanic offenders. I would Hispanics have
a very high rate also.
Speaker 5 (26:42):
Of technically considered white.
Speaker 3 (26:45):
But exactly and That's that's why I say that I
would probably lump all that together. But the uh, the
overall profile is is so difficult to build because you'll
see offenders from poverty stricken areas, You'll see them from
affluent areas. You'll see doctors, you'll see lawyers, you'll see
(27:06):
construction workers, You'll see you know, guys who are very
athletic and guys who are very out of shape, and
it just it's all, It runs the gamut. The only
consistent thread is that it's largely white men, but females
have had a huge uptick, especially female teachers, in victimizing students,
(27:34):
which is kind of an interesting topic that needs to
be you know, looked at a little bit more at depth.
Speaker 5 (27:44):
Yeah, friends, we're talking with retired detective and child predator
investigator Kevin Cronisher about how smartphones have changed the threat
landscape facing children across the country. We're going to take
a break. Please stay with us. You're listening to America's
Criminologists on k m ET radio and streaming everywhere. Stay tuned, Hi, folks,
(28:22):
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(28:42):
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(31:41):
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(32:02):
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(32:24):
so it was wonderful, So feel free to check out
my page. We're continuing conversation today with the detective retired
detective Kevin Kronisser, who spent years investigating crime against children
and tracking how technology has changed the way predators operate.
You can check him out and Guardian Training Solutions Kevin.
What's that web website.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
Guardian Training Solutions dot com.
Speaker 5 (32:48):
You know where you can google him all kinds of it.
He is on does a lot of interviews. I've had
him on this show before, I had him on The
lou Desmond Show before when I've guest hosted there. But
he's also done a lot of podcasts and you can
see his work there. I highly suggest you check him
out because there's things that you learn each time when
(33:09):
he does this, because he's just a wealth of knowledge.
So before the break, we talked about how smart smart
smartphones have dramatically increased exposure risk for the kids. So
what I'd like to do is kind of turn to
the next question in this second half, what family schools
and policymakers, what we can actually try to do about
(33:29):
this in the future. I know there's I'm a federalist,
so we want to be careful on government overreach and
all those kinds of things. But at the same time,
we have to have good parenting, that's number one. But
there needs to be some checks and balances, and quite frankly,
in my opinion, it seems to me that it's had
(33:51):
to make a difference when more and more states have
now put some regulatory into effect. When it comes to
pornography where you have to ask for you have to
do a user name, or have to do a date,
I think is what they do. You know, data to birth.
You have to put information in there, you know, to
be able to view online porn basically, and I would
(34:17):
be interested in the study. It's got to make a
difference because people want to hide in the shadows. They
don't want to they don't want to have to put
information about themselves into that kind of material. So the
issue becomes kevin in my opinion, there's got to be
a back end into anything or quick changes on little
things on the internet, and maybe a website that all
(34:37):
of a sudden takes them out of that. You know
that the host website can do. I mean, there's many
things that could be done. So let's kind of get
into this framing, if you will, on what to do
in the future.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
Yeah, my first and foremost goal recently here in Kansas
where I'm at, was to help pass a bill that
restricted cell phone usage in schools from bell to bell.
(35:15):
And initially, you know, because I'm just like you, I'm
very much a the less the government is involved, the
better we all are kind of a mindset. But the
reality is is that the data is so overwhelmingly negative
(35:37):
when it comes to cell phone usage in schools that
that seemed like the place to start, because in my experience,
there's two high risk locations that a predator oftentimes reaches
out to children via devices. The first one is in
(35:58):
their bedroom late at night after parents have gone to bed,
when a child's not really thinking correctly, they're tired, maybe
they're emotional, they're stressed, right, And the second one is
at school, and the reason for that is kind of threefold.
Kids have more freedom at school, I think than parents realize,
(36:22):
and it's very easy for a kid to run off.
Hey I need to use the bathroom. Hey I'm gonna
skip gym. Class, whatever the case is, and go hide
out with their cell phone somewhere and communicate with a predator.
The second thing is that predators know that there's no
parents around while a child's at school, and the teachers
(36:42):
are too overwhelmingly busy to police cell phone usage. And
then the third thing is communicating with a child while
they're at school gives them access to victims. And I
don't think people realize the number of victims that have
been created by another victim. So, and what I mean
(37:03):
by that is, you know, predator victimizes a child, that
child goes to school, predator reaches out to that child
and convinces them to, hey, introduce me to little Susie,
your friend. And then now he has Little Susie's information
and he's chatting with her.
Speaker 5 (37:21):
And we saw that manifestation in the Epstein cases where
victims would introduce other girls, mainly girls. Of course this
is more of a physical relationship that was trans transpiring,
but it happens. Yeah, same concept, right.
Speaker 3 (37:39):
Yeah, And so so the schools, and to be to
be quite honest with you, the schools were one of
the places where I realized we could actually get regulations
involved fairly easily in schools, whereas I don't believe we
(38:01):
should be regulating how parents parent their kids. I don't
believe we should be, you know, involving ourselves inside of
people's homes. So I thought to myself, like, what's the
low hanging fruit here, and regulations in school was, in
my opinion, the easiest low hanging fruit to go after
(38:24):
that would produce the greatest results. And so it actually
started with school districts telling schools that they were now
required to create some kind of their own restriction plan
for cell phones. And that worked to some extent, but
(38:48):
it didn't really because what most of them ended up
doing was saying, Okay, your phone can't be out while
you're in class, right right, but we're still there, yea?
Speaker 5 (39:01):
And teacher was this was this subjected just to public
schools or did it pack?
Speaker 3 (39:06):
No? So the bill actually and I have mixed feelings
about this, but the bill actually requires public schools as well. Yeah,
so private was private?
Speaker 5 (39:16):
Religious schools?
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (39:18):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, and and you know, we
should not think that this doesn't occur in private schools
or in religious schools, because it happens everywhere.
Speaker 3 (39:31):
And I struggled a little bit with that, as I'm
sure you kind of do with the idea that that
we're allowing the government to essentially go into a private
school and say hey, you have to do X, Y
and Z. The public schools I was more okay with
because they're publicly funded, right, and it's it's one of
(39:53):
those things where it's like, you do you got to
you gotta do that. The public schools are way more
tied in with the government and the private schools, right,
But with the private schools, the problem is still the same.
And I didn't think that they were going to be
able to get the private or get the private school
portion of the bill passed, and it still passed.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
So anyway, now does this go through K through twelve? Okay?
So what was there? Just one second while I was
thinking about so, is there any was there any pushback
from teachers that are in the upper grades, let's say,
junior high to high school because some teachers actually will
have people do research using their phones or laptops in
(40:41):
the schools, And was there any pushback there?
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Not really, because a majority of the students still had
access to whatever laptop or.
Speaker 5 (40:54):
Uh okay that might be tethered there.
Speaker 3 (40:57):
Yeah, but the school gave them, so it was it
was really just about the phones, the unfettered access, right.
Speaker 5 (41:04):
I didn't mean I just want to know.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
No, that's a good point, you know. The biggest the
biggest pushback that we got was from the folks that
the argument was local control the school. The school knows
its community and it should have the ultimate say on
how to implement these changes. Right, and to a certain extent,
I agree. But the problem was is that we tried
(41:29):
that and and we didn't really see results because kids
were still figuring out ways to get their phones. And
the studies are showing too that even if my cell
phone is not sitting here on my desk in front
of me, even if it's in my backpack, if I
have the ability, the physical ability to grab my phone,
(41:50):
then my attention is constantly split all day long. Different
if your phone is locked up in a locker somewhere
and you know you don't have access to it, you
forget about it until the end of the day. And
so even those policies, as well meeting as they were,
those policies were failing to address some of the other concerns,
which were the mental health concerns. And test scores plummeting,
(42:13):
and kids, you know, ADHD type symptoms from feeling like
they're constantly have a divided attention. And so it just
it wasn't working, and so something else need to be done.
And so the Bell de Belle cell phone ban passed,
and I had the privilege of testifying in front of
(42:35):
the Kansas House Education Committee and the Kansas Senate Education Committee,
and I basically told them what I just told you.
I said that schools are a right place for grooming
and for predator communication. And I gave them those same
three reasons why. And I just said that, you know,
(42:56):
I'm only speaking from a from a law enforcement perspective.
I'm by no means trying to address, you know, the
the psychological issues, though there are many that are stemming
from the cell phone addictions and stuff like that. And
it seemed to have a pretty profound impact on them,
because I again I don't think teachers, parents, you know, coaches,
(43:22):
anybody who is responsible for children. I don't think they
realized the extent of this problem. Yeah, and once once
I was able to kind of explain it to them,
I think I think it resonated with them and to
their credit. I got a lot of follow up questions
and emails from committee members that wanted to know a
little bit more about what I was seeing, and so
(43:45):
that was that was one of the one of the
number one things that that I thought, Like step one,
we got kids spend a majority of their lives nine
months out of the year in school, So if we
can target that one space and make it cell phone free,
we're going to be eliminating a lot of the potential
(44:06):
contact between predators and children.
Speaker 5 (44:09):
Yeah, well, we have to remember too that that we're
already addicted to our phones just in normal use. Certainly
children are too. But when it goes back to this
what occurs, what occurs in the in the in the
mind of somebody goes back to the the thought when
(44:30):
you're when you're exposed to something earlier than what you should,
you know, especially sexually. Let's say you're fifth sixth grade
and exposed to something, then it does change how you think.
It does. It does make you want to try to
reach out for that for that phone more because you've
(44:51):
been addicted in another way. So the dopeminergic system is
actually switching those synapses you know, inside your mind to
make you focused, hyper focus on on the lust side
of it in order to satisfy your you know, your
needs at that time. So it becomes even a more
(45:13):
heightened sense of need to be able to grab that phone.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Right. Yeah, for sure. It almost becomes kind of a
panic the first the first period of time where they
don't have access to it. It's like this panic of
like I'm missing a limb kind of.
Speaker 5 (45:30):
Yeah, any feedback yet from it has gone into effect. Now,
I'll have to double check maybe July first or something.
Speaker 3 (45:39):
I think that it's going to go into effect in
this coming uh school year. And and it was you know,
and it wasn't just me. I mean, I don't want
to make it sound like I got up there and
got this bill passed. There were dozens of experts from
every possible field. Uh. Susan Dunaway, she's a neurotherapist. She
(46:02):
talked about the danger of cell phone usage in schools,
and like, when I was talking about how they're they're constantly,
they constantly have divided attention even if their phone isn't
in front of them. She was the one that brought
that up because that's you know, obviously her brain function
as her Forte Kim Whitman with Screen Free School's USA
(46:30):
was fantastic And anyway, there's a whole slew of experts
that got up and testified on behalf of this bill,
and so it was a really a really positive thing
in my mind. I know there's some people that aren't
happy with it, but you know, I think ultimately it's
going to be a good thing. So that was step
one for me was getting cell phones out of schools
(46:50):
in between the bells. And then you know, the second
thing for me is like I like I mentioned earlier,
is parents understanding better, a understanding the problem better and
be paying attention to their children's emotional behaviors their ability
(47:13):
to regulate their emotions, because a lot of things can
just be written up to like hormones, right, But the
reality is is that if you know your child well enough,
and this is just involved parenting, right, if you know
your child well enough, you will get a hunch about
behaviors that are occurring because of something that's happening in
(47:38):
their life. Right. And so that to me is the
most important thing parents can do because you're not going
to be able to keep up to date on all
of the technology it's going to continue to outpace parents,
it outpaces law enforcement. And so the best thing that
you can do is get to know your child better
and to pay attention to their to their behaviors, and
(48:01):
keep phones out of their damn bedrooms.
Speaker 5 (48:04):
Yeah, yeah, I think you have to.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
You have to.
Speaker 5 (48:06):
You have to gather them in the evening, yeah, and
say they're you know, put the phone in the basket,
you know for sure. And not only not only does
it it goes off, you know, turn it off because
the ability to track your phone, I mean phones can
be even turned off now and there's still tracking, you know,
(48:28):
So that that's which is amazing, and that kind of
brings up to this again with legislation there there are
always concerns about surveillance data collection tied to some of
the device restriction proposals that happened. How did you weigh
that balance is it? What kind of argument is it?
And how did you kind of satisfy that that's you know,
(48:52):
civil liberty approach there?
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Do you do? You mean.
Speaker 5 (48:56):
Privacy concerns like about people about government taking information from
the child's phone when it comes to data collection and
to be able to use for something else down the road. Yeah,
I mean it really doesn't do that, right, It just
it just takes away the phone. It's not like the.
Speaker 3 (49:15):
Way the front out. Basically, what it looks like is
the child shows up the school with their phone. There's
a bank of lockers, they put it in a locker,
they shut it, they've got a key. At the end
of the day, they go back and get their phone
and they leave. Yeah, and so there's no nobody else
has any access to the phone either. And you know,
one of the biggest arguments was, well, you know, I
(49:37):
should be able to get a hold of my child
in an emergency, right and that as a parent, that
seems like something that.
Speaker 5 (49:43):
They're not at school. I mean, that's why you call
the school.
Speaker 3 (49:46):
And that and that was my answer was when you
are able to have unfettered access to to your own child,
which again I am one hundred percent opposed to the government,
you know, telling people how to raise their kids. But
when there's an emergency at school and you have three
(50:10):
hundred kids calling nine to one one instead of a
couple of teachers calling nine to one one, that overwhelms center. Right.
Then they start calling parents and parents start rushing to
the scene, which then causes a problem for responding officers,
(50:31):
And so I understand the initial thought like, well, if
there's an emergency, I should know, and I agree, but
it shouldn't. It shouldn't happen immediately because then it interferes
with the response to that emergency, right, And so in
my opinion, this almost makes a response to an emergency
(50:54):
more efficient because there's less potential conflicting information coming in.
People aren't showing up on stcene. For example, in Oleitha,
the school shooting that occurred, right, I can't remember if
this was. I can't remember how many years ago it was.
He just recently got sentenced. But a student at one
(51:16):
of the Oleifa school districts shot a school resource officer
and the it was the principal or the vice principal,
I can't remember exactly. I responded to that shooting, and
I couldn't get into the school the parking lot because
(51:37):
there were parents and the news and so it just
made me realize how difficult it is when you have
so many people involved in the handling of an emergency, Right,
you got three hundred kids trying to contact people anyway,
So I try to explain that to the parents too,
(51:58):
that it's not all is a great thing when your
child can reach you immediately during a problem.
Speaker 5 (52:04):
Well, another thing to be concerned about is if the
school is a soft target as well, and there are
going to be people that are going to set some incident,
could even be a school shooting, but the real reason
why they are going to do something is to have
a secondary issue that's going to happen, where it could
be a bombs or additional shooting that could happen. I mean,
(52:26):
you know, we're living in a world of terrorism right now.
We're at war in many cases. And I've done these
battlefield scenarios and urban sectors before and did that as
a defense contractor, and I've always been concerned with soft
targets being used for a secondary event. The first event
(52:47):
gathers people isn't the primary event. So people have to
understand that there could be secondary devices. And when I
was in the nineteen ninety three Federal Building courthouse bombing,
the shooting incident, he I mean, this is a long
time ago, and he had secondary devices. He had put
bombs down, time delay bombs, and gravitation bombs as you
(53:11):
walk by could go off. Those were all secondary devices
to go off anytime after the event had finished.
Speaker 3 (53:21):
For sure, for sure, And that's an example, that's a
great example of and nobody. I don't think people really
think along those lines, right. And then another argument was, well,
my child has a specific health issue and they need
to be able to get a hold of me if
(53:41):
they start having these health issues. And my response is
kind of the same. You're not gonna be able to
really do anything from twenty minutes away, so they need
to go to the school nurse and go through that
process and then the school can contact you. And then
the next argument was, well, my child's device controls his insulin, right,
The bill has carveouts for carve outs for situations like that.
(54:06):
So if your child's cell phone controls is insulin, they're
not going to take it away from him, but there's
going to be other restrictions like, hey man, you can
have it to control your insulin, but if you're on it,
we're going to check to make sure that's what you're doing.
Kind of a thing. But they have they have those,
you know, those those exceptions to the rules. So anyway, yeah, overall,
(54:29):
I think it was it was a great thing that
the that the bill passed, and I think that the
opponents to the bill, as time goes on, they'll see
the benefit of it, and then the negative things I
don't think are going to come to fruition, or at
least not as often as they think that they will. Yep.
Speaker 5 (54:50):
So heaven, we were running out of time.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
Yep.
Speaker 5 (54:53):
But in twenty second response, twenty years from now, what
are we going to be seeing when it comes to
this on the technology.
Speaker 3 (55:02):
Artificial intelligence is going to make it to where we
don't know the difference between rail and fake and a
majority of the aspects of our lives, and so I
think that we're going to be seeing situations where the
sex stortion levels are going to skyrocket, especially for teen
boys who get tricked into thinking that somebody is a
(55:24):
teenage girl. Yeah, and it's really not. And we're going
to see the grooming process go through a transition because
pedophiles are going to be able to pretend to be kids.
Speaker 5 (55:36):
And Kevin, amazing stuff. Thanks for joining us today and
sharing experience from the front lines on protecting kids.
Speaker 3 (55:43):
Yes, thank you for having me.
Speaker 5 (55:45):
My pleasure, Doctor Curry Meyers. Here in America's criminologists, stay safe,
stay informed, to remember public safety begins long before the
first police call is ever made. Stay safe.
Speaker 1 (56:01):
Carl still shoots the cattle's wage, just touching, never as
a page a man, because shadows the secrets light. Doctor
Curry's NS couts through the scout amer I can scram
anologist calling the mild.
Speaker 2 (56:20):
Sails of the law.
Speaker 1 (56:22):
In the atmosphere, gangles and crimes break in the change
foot fos to start do the pase
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