Help not wanted: CSPD pushes back against Colorado Ped Patrol
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO)-- Colorado Ped Patrol, the civilian group, who poses as minors online to try to catch child predators in the act, made their first Colorado Springs bust Monday. But Colorado Springs Police is not interested in their help.
Thomas Fellows, who runs Colorado Ped Patrol, had one of his decoys pose as a 14-year-old boy looking for sex on the app Grindr.
Fellows says a 37-year-old Colorado Springs man set up a time to have the boy meet at his house, but was greeted by the Colorado Ped Patrol instead. Fellows and two other Colorado Ped Patrol members waited for Colorado Springs Police to arrive to arrest the man.
Instead, CSPD told Fellows that the group compromised any investigation they may have previously had. CSPD left the scene without walking into the home to interview the man.
Fellows was surprised and disappointed. He says this differed from his usual experiences with the police.
"They’ve never come out like that and said we’re not going to take care of any of your shenanigans," Fellows said.
The response from CSPD is a strong contrast from what happened back in June with Woodland Park Police, who arrested a man lured by Colorado Ped Patrol.
CSPD lieutenant James Sokolik says groups like Colorado Ped Patrol are dangerous.
"If you have contacted somebody who is now fearful they are going to be held responsible for a criminal act, there is that potential you could get hurt," Sokolik added.
Sokolik says it's important to note that people like Fellows aren’t police-trained interviewers, and there’s a chance his videos wouldn’t hold up a courtroom.
But Woodland Park Police and CSPD fall under the same district attorney’s office.
"I certainly can’t speak to what Woodland Park [police] did or didn’t do, what information they had ahead of time, or any of that," Sokolik said. "So these are very much different things."
Fellows though, thinks his group is doing important work, and that they are doing the work police agencies, like CSPD, should be doing.
"If they could have got it— well they would have never ran into the guy. That’s the problem, there’s not enough of them out there," Fellows added.
"That would be a ridiculous assumption," Sokolik said. "This is not a competition, that somebody has beat us to it. Somebody would have to have probable cause to affect a lawful arrest, and that’s not given to us by somebody saying 'I had a conversation online.'”
