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September 21, 2025 13 mins
In this episode, host Phil Tower speaks with  Michigan State Police Detective Mark Fisher, a member of the  Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force.


Detective Fisher joined us on the program to talk about the recent launch of an awareness campaign by his task force and the Michigan State police to inform parents about the growing dangers of online sexual predators, as well as sextortion, grooming, and other predatory behaviors against children.
The “Opening the Door” campaign, led by the Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, includes a video public service announcement drawing attention to online predatory behavior like grooming and sextortion, and encouraging adults to be proactive in talking to their children about online dangers.

Detective Fisher said that in today’s digital environment, sexual predators use social media, messaging apps, and gaming platforms to gain access to our children, and the use of these tools can be like opening a door right into your child’s bedroom. That’s the focus  of the Michigan State Police’s new public awareness campaign aimed at teaching parents and children how to safely navigate the digital world. 

Report child sexual exploitation or abuse, including grooming or harm, to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s (NCMEC) CyberTipline at www.cybertipline.org or by calling 1-800-THE-LOST.
The Michigan ICAC Task Force is part of a national network ​of 61 coordinated task forces representing over 4,500 law enforcement agencies engaged in proactive and reactive investigations and prosecutions of people involved in child abuse and exploitation involving the ​internet.

Online: Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force

 
Topics Addressed: Internet crimes against children, criminal sexual conduct, online predatory behavior, grooming, sextortion, and safe online behavior.
Mark as Played
Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is iHeartRadio's West Michigan Weekend. West Michigan Weekend is
a weekly programmed designed to inform and enlighten on a
wide range of public policy issues, as well as news
and current events. Now here's your host, Phil Tower.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Once again, I appreciate you tuning in across whatever iHeartRadio
station you are listening to, and in this segment, a
very important topic, a very serious topic. The Michigan State
Police recently launching an awareness campaign regarding online sexual predators.
In today's very busy, very overwhelming digital environment with smartphones

(00:40):
and laptops and the Internet everywhere, sexual predators are more
savvy and ever than ever. They are using social media,
messaging apps, gaming platforms just about anywhere to prey on
children and it is a serious issue. It has been
for decades. We are very please to catch up in

(01:01):
this segment with Michigan State Police Detective Mark Fisher, part
of the Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Detective Fisher,
first of all, thank you for joining us on iHeartRadio.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Well, good morning, mister Tower. Thank you for having me
on today. Really appreciate the opportunity with your station to
get us out there and spread some awareness about what
we're working on here.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, this is the opening the Door campaign led by
your task force, the Michigan Internet Crimes against Children task Force.
There will be a video PSA drawing attention to online
predatory behavior like grooming and sex shortation. A lot of
this is educating and encouraging parents and adults to have
that conversation with their kids about the dangers online. I

(01:46):
think we take a lot of this for granted, Detective
Fisher as parents or maybe older brothers and sisters, that
kids know about grooming, they know about sex shortation, they
know about the sites, and hopefully parents have been pro
active and blocking some sites. But this is still a
serious issue even you know, many many years into the Internet, isn't.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
It It is? And you know, there just can't be
enough awareness about it. You know, there's items on the Internet,
and there's dangers on the Internet, and new stuff pops
up every day. So the more that we can get
parents and their kids talking about it, the better.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
This is a video that will be shared throughout social media,
hopefully starting conversations. There's also a terrific website, an important
website parents should be aware of, Michigan dot gov Forward,
slash ICAC or IKAC. Talk about your work, Detective Fisher
with the Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children task Force, You,

(02:43):
along with other detectives you work here in Michigan. What
do you do specifically? Give us a kind of an
overview what the task force does.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
We have a lot of roles here in this task
force going back to about nineteen ninety eight when it
was started, and we're very fortunate to work throughout the state.
We have seven offices that focus on IKAK investigations throughout
the state, and each office is made up of MSP members.
So we've got detective troopers from the State Police, supervisors

(03:15):
from the State Police, and then we also have local affiliates,
so we've got local law enforcement, you know, particularly here
in Grand Rapids. We work with our county partners Kent
County and GRPD, Wyoming PD, you know, locals, even Newego
County Sheriff's office. So we all are in the office together.
We have an opportunity to work together in order to

(03:38):
help kids online. So the IKAK are the Internet Crimes
Against Children Task Force. Essentially, what we do is we're
investigating crimes like you were seeing such as sextortion, online grooming.
There's child sexually abusive material that's being traded online, and
we're receiving information through from the public or from Internet

(04:02):
service providers that are coming through a cyber tip line,
and that's provided by the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children and their tip line if I can plug
them here for just a second. On their website, it's
www dot cyber Tipline dot org. And then there's a
lot of information on their website, and their website is

(04:25):
also linked through ours, which is the one that you
had mentioned earlier at Michigan dot gov ord slash kak.
So what happens is the National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children. They can receive tips from service providers such
as you know, we'll say, for example, like Google or
Instagram or one of your Internet service providers. If they

(04:47):
detect some sort of child sexually abusive material on their servers,
they'll pull that material because they don't they don't want
that information on their servers. It's the illegal for them
to possess that, so they'll forward that through the Nickmick
is what we call it, that National Center for Missing
Unexploited Children. And then that gets funneled down and broken

(05:08):
down into areas throughout the state and forwarded into our
office so that we have an opportunity to look at
that and then begin our investigations there. So we have,
you know, proactive investigations. We have reactive investigations. There's times
where we're identifying what we refer to as live victims,
maybe unknown images that haven't been seen online before, which

(05:32):
usually will help us determine whether this is new material
or being produced by somebody. But we're also dealing a
lot with, like you were saying, that the extortion of
these children for sexual images or behavior. So part of
what prompted that new commercial that our unit is going
to be releasing was a we were very, very fortunate

(05:54):
to receive a grant to make this commercial. You know,
we were so appreciative for that because we feel, you know,
very deeply that it's really important that we can get
a hold of you know, parents and children and kind
of let them know what's going on here. But you know,
part of the reason that we got that grant and
we were able to make this commercial was we've seen
this uptick on online enticement of children for sexual acts.

(06:16):
They were about well. Back in we'll say, for example,
back in twenty twenty two, there were over eighty thousand
tips that we received, and then just last year twenty
twenty four, we received over half a million tips. I
want to the go ahead.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
I want to stop you right there. That just blew
me away, Detective Fisher. Yeah, eighty thousand tips.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, yeah, Oh my goodness. And that's that's why this
is such a big concern, you know, and other parents.
Are our parents out there that are listening, they know that,
you know, the Internet is growing, right, it's just rapidly expanding,
and our children are talking with their peers at school

(06:57):
and stuff like that, and they're finding these different platforms
that they can express themselves on. And we're not trying
to discourage that or them connecting with their friends. That's
not the issue. That The issue that we're seeing is
that predators are now finding that that's where they can
access our children, right.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
On platforms like TikTok, Instagram and even and this is
this is one that is relatively different and new, but
certainly makes sense. With so much multiplayer online gaming, kids
are being preyed upon, They're they're being potentially groomed on

(07:36):
online gaming platforms because there are adults on there, many
of them pretending to be kids as well. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (07:44):
Right?

Speaker 3 (07:45):
That is correct, And that's one of the ways that
they are grooming our children is that they're maybe meeting
them on platforms that the kids are using, and they're
pretending to be younger than what they are. And then
not only that, but these gaming consoles or platforms, they're
they're really worldwide, right, you can connect with anybody right nowadays,

(08:08):
across the globe. So yeah, just for an example, like
you were saying, with the grooming, you know, they're pretending
these our predators, they're pretending to be younger. You know,
they're gaming with the kids, they developed its rapport with
the kids. They start doing like role playing and maybe
engaging in sexual conversations, and it just escalates from there, right,

(08:28):
And that's the conversation that we need to be having
with our kids. It's super important as parents to have
these open conversations with the kids talk about their involvement
with different platforms like this.

Speaker 2 (08:41):
We're speaking, by the way, with Michigan State Police Detective
Mark Fisher. Detective Fishers with the Michigan Internet Crimes Against
Children task Force. You can learn more at Michigan dot gov,
forward slash kak ic AC. Really want to encourage you
to check out this website. It's a terrific website. Is
also the cyber tip line website CyberTipline dot org or

(09:04):
you can call one eight hundred the loss to report
any potential concerns about grooming or predatory behavior online. We
will definitely add to do a part two of this,
Detective Fisher, I do want to mention something that I
know is probably frustrating, but it's a serious part of
your detective work with internet crimes against children here in

(09:27):
Grand Rapids and across the state of Michigan is artificial intelligence.
AI can just about create anything, including sexually graphic images
of adults and children, and those images can be traded
and are being traded online. This is a new and
challenging area. Are you treating it any differently or do

(09:48):
you take it exactly the same as if these were
images taken of actual children.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Well, it is going to be a challenge, and I
think there are predators that are relying on the fact
that they could say to them themselves or they could
testify saying well this isn't a live person. The way
that the law is written in the state of Michigan,
it doesn't matter if it's a life person. It's depicting
a child. So if it's an image AI generated and

(10:16):
it's depicting a child in a sexual manner, you know,
exposing certain parts of their body, then it's the same
as if it's a live photo.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Indeed, it is something that is continuing to be a concern,
not only with regard to online predatory behavior, but in
multiple aspects of the digital realm, and we're still trying
to figure this all out. One of the other things
I wanted to talk about real quickly before we run
out of time, sexhortation, Extorting someone saying you have a

(10:47):
picture of them nude, You're going to distribute it. It
may be real, it may be a fake AI photo
of a real person's face and head graphically changed with
AI to represent or to mimic a nude photo, and
then threatening someone with a certain type of promise or

(11:10):
threat or extorting someone for money. And that's happening. We've
already read about that happening in schools with school age children.
This is something that is considered an Internet sex crime
against children as well.

Speaker 3 (11:23):
Correct. That is correct, and that is part of those
statistics that I gave you. The uptick in that as
we're seeing a huge uptick in that, and we really
want to focus on that because that's what's so dangerous
is we're seeing reactions from our victims, our children, our victims,
extreme reactions such as even as far as hurting themselves,

(11:44):
harming themselves, or even killing themselves. And that's why this
is so important to learn more about this so we
can protect our kids.

Speaker 2 (11:52):
Detective Mark Fisher is with us with the Michigan State
Police Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. We want
to real quickly give the website again to prepare your
kids for what can happen, what to do with something
disturbing or harmful occurs, or even something you're just suspicious about.
You should go to Michigan dot gov, forward slash kac ICAC,

(12:14):
the Internet Crimes against Children website and you can report
things there. You can leave a tip. It is very
very important that you educate yourself as a parent. You
can also learn more about the resources that are there
when anytime someone uses the Internet to exploit, endanger, harmed children.
This is what we're talking about about Internet crimes against

(12:37):
children again. The website is Michigan dot gov forward slash
ic AC. Detective Fisher, I want to really thank you
for your time, Detective Mark Fisher, our guests with the
Michigan Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. Thank you so
much for your enlightening us, educating us about your work,

(12:58):
and thank you on behalf of all of our listeners
for what you're doing on behalf of you and your team.

Speaker 3 (13:03):
Well, thank you, mister Tower for the time. I really
appreciate it. It's really important to us. And if I
can just plug one more thing in there, if there
are any parents or organizations or even schools that would
think they would benefit from a presentation from our office,
they can request that also on our website. So and
we'd be happy to come out and present what we

(13:23):
can to the staff or the student. Would be our pleasure.

Speaker 2 (13:27):
Yeah, I think that is a wonderful service and you
can learn more about that on the website Michigan dot
gov Forward slash ic AC.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
You've been listening to iHeartRadio's West Michigan Weekend. West Michigan
Weekend is a production of Wood Radio and iHeartRadio,
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