Erik Estrada urges lawmakers to fund Internet crimes force

RICHMOND — Erik Estrada, who used to play a cop on TV, had a Capitol press corps silent and sober Wednesday as he talked about tracking down Internet child-porn dealers with the Bedford County sheriff’s department.

“When you see a 9-year-old … forget 9-year-old, how about 11-month-old, baby girl in a situation where she is being victimized by an adult … this is what’s going on out there,” Estrada said, haltingly and quietly.

“It’s nasty, and we can do something about it.”

“I decided to ad-lib this stuff,” Estrada said, “because what I see is real and it is out there and it is just a click away.”

He had started his four-minute talk by thanking reporters for attending the news conference, which was intended to help win state funds for the Internet Crimes Against Children task force.

Estrada’s voice became emotional and understated as he described a police officer introducing him to the Internet’s child-porn offerings. By typing in a 3-digit code and clicking, the instant result was 457 hits from people online at that moment, offering to sell him pornographic images of 4-year-old children.

“I help with all the Latino stuff that comes through my unit,” Estrada said.

Estrada said he is a certified officer with the Bedford-based Internet Crimes Against Children task force, one of two in Virginia. The other, run by State Police, operates in the Washington, D.C., suburbs.

Estrada has made publicity appearances for the Bedford sheriff’s department in the past but rarely with the mood that was present in the room Wednesday.

Estrada got celebrity treatment the rest of the day in the General Assembly, with formal recognitions in the House of Delegates and in the Senate, where Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, introduced Estrada.

Because of what he has learned from the ICAC program, Newman said, all the computers in his house are in the family room where everyone can see images on the screens.

Estrada, who starred as “Ponch” on “ChiPs” from 1977-83, told reporters that he came to Richmond “on my own time and my own dime” to promote the ICAC funding.

Bedford Sheriff Mike Brown said the ICAC unit focuses on the busiest sellers of child pornography.

“We search for predators who traffic in child pornography on virtually every street corner on the Internet. These predators are out in the light of day, trading sadistic images blatantly and with impunity,” Brown said.

“They are driving the demand for new images and therefore new child rape,” Brown said.

Nationwide, 20,000 new videos appear each week that show sexual assaults on children, said Stephen Anders, an investigator on Brown’s ICAC force.

In a promotional line for one of the images, the Internet text shown during the news conference said, “2-year-old raped at bath time; she cries for mommy.”

Another site offered how-to instructions for making the videos.

In Virginia, 78 convictions involving child pornography were recorded in courts last year, Anders said, and hundreds of cases still are in the court system.

Later Wednesday, the House Appropriations Committee approved a bill that assesses a new $10 fee on every criminal conviction in Virginia in order to fund the two ICAC programs.

If the fee envisioned in SB 620 were collected in every case, it could generate $4.5 million per year, a General Assembly staff analysis said. However, in many criminal cases the court fees are never paid, which could result in the fee generating less than $4.5 million, the staff report said.

The measure already has passed the Senate, and with the hurdle in House Appropriations cleared, approval by the full General Assembly appeared likely.