Retire VA 22 - 39

" And finally, I says, 'Okay, all right,
well, another adventure,' " he says.
Brown would win that term plus five
others making him the third longestrunning
sheriff in the county.
Shortly after, dispatch received a
call one night from a parent in Forest
who asked if an officer come by as their
teenaged daughter was getting calls from
someone in Florida asking her to make an
adult film.
" No one was quite sure what to do, "
Brown says. " We had we just hired a
police officer from Liberty University who
was very computer literate even then
and told him to go over and talk to these
people and find out what the heck is
going on. "
The patrol officer returned to Brown
and told him he'd never seen anything
like it and that the girl's ex-boyfriend had
taken her photos and spammed them
onto the internet, which, at the time, was
just taking off.
The officer assumed the identity of
the teen girl and had the Florida man
convicted.
As an extension of Brown's passion,
With crimes like this increasing,
the Sheriff's Office took a chance and
applied for a competitive grant to
start its own Internet Crimes Against
Children Taskforce in which only 10 were
appointed throughout the county.
" There isn't any way, " Brown says. " We
were up against Virginia State Police,
departments all over the county were
applying for it. We were the smallest
agency to apply for it. "
Bedford County got the grant and still
has the taskforce today.
Brown put a captain in charge along
with a sergeant and two investigators.
Today the department has more than 25
staff members on the taskforce including
forensic investigators who operate out of
the Internet Crimes Against Children Task
Force headquarters in Forest.
This summer Brown was announced
as one of the members to serve on Gov.
Glenn Younkin's Commission on Human
Trafficking Prevention and Survivor
Support.
he wanted kids to be educated about
the dangers of internet predators as
social media and technology are more
prevalent.
" I know what these predators are
doing, I know what's happening to kids, "
Brown says.
Brown created the Safe Surfin'
Foundation in 1998 which teaches the
Cyber SWAT program.
In an effort to reach kids with
information about cyber safety, Brown
says the nonprofit tried cartoon
characters, coloring books and even
celebrities such as Shaquille O'Neal to
reach the kids but what has been the
most effective and surprising to Brown
was peer-to-peer educating.
" Kids need to be aware, " he says. " If
you give a child a iPad, smartphone when
they in middle school, they've got the
world in their hands and they have no
idea. The predators are good at what they
do. Law enforcement has to run to keep
up with these slugs. " I
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RETIRE-VA 2023 / Retire-VA.com / 39
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