Mission School District employee linked to latest Creep Catchers sting
Posted October 24, 2016 10:25 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
MISSION (NEWS 1130) – It appears another person in a position of power may have been caught on a Creep Catchers video run by one of the group’s local chapters.
In a video posted late last week, a man the group names as “James,” is approached as he is sitting at a food court in an Abbotsford mall. The man then gets up from the table, zips up a black hoodie and rushes out the door, with the person taking the video follows him.
In an online posting, Fraser Valley parents identified the man as an elementary school principal in the Mission School District. That district has confirmed it is investigating but won’t comment further.
“We became aware of the incident on Friday. We’ve been investigating ever since. And we do have a planned meeting with some individuals who will provide statements and hopefully some evidence to us today,” explains Abbotsford Police Constable Ian MacDonald.
Creep Catchers claims in the lead up to the confrontation, “James” communicated with what he thought was a pair of two underage girls aged 14 and 15, calling them “sexy, cute, beautiful.”
On its website, the group adds. “After several weeks of communications with James and one failed [meeting] James agreed to meet our two decoys. He wanted to become our decoys ‘sugar daddy’ and take them on shopping sprees.”
MacDonald says they are hoping to speak to the man in the video. “It’s been an active investigation, I won’t go into all of the details of it. But certainly that [interview] would be one of the things that we would be doing and then following the evidence from there.”
A series of recent Creep Catchers videos have allegedly captured a UBC employee, a transit bus driver and a Surrey RCMP officer in the act of meeting up with under-aged children.
Last week Constable Dario Devic was formally charged with child luring. The BC Criminal Justice Branch believes Devic was communicating with someone under the age of 16 for facilitating sexual conduct.
While he appreciates that people want to stop online child luring, MacDonald cautions against supporting vigilante groups. “I understand the group has intentions and many of those intentions do line up with the public good but some of them don’t, in fact, assist law enforcement. And in some of those instances, law enforcement isn’t engaged.”
