Selflessly working with the “global team”, no matter where in the world the victim might live, is one of the main themes of the Kinsa training. Once enough officers are trained in such methods and are patrolling the Internet, then they too will be involved in such rescues, some right here in Canada. In fact, this has already happened.
In 2008 officers from the Toronto Police Service and the Maine State Police led an 18 month investigation regarding a series of images of abuse posted on the Internet. The investigators believed that the pictures were taken near the border between New Brunswick and Maine. Members of the Interpol Specialist Group on Crimes Against Children had also been involved, scouring their own countries’ image databases for previously undiscovered pictures in this series. None were found and the investigation had stalled. In May of 2008, a team of investigators and computer forensic analysts from the Brazilian Federal Police came to Canada for Kinsa training. During training, the officers were made aware of this case and invited to join the Interpol Group. One of the computer analysts did so, and by using his extensive experience and the Brazilian image database, this analyst found many pictures in this series of abuse which had never been seen by the Interpol Group before. One of the pictures he found was the missing piece of the puzzle , and, once completed, an offender in New Brunswick was identified and arrested by the R.C.M.P. The offender has to date been charged with new and historical offenses involving ten child victims and is suspected of having many more. Click here to read CBC coverage of the story.