AUSTIN – The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) announced today that DPS officers – with the support of the DPS Interdiction for the Protection of Children (IPC) program – rescued 48 missing or exploited children in 2014.
“When a child goes missing, that boy or girl becomes exponentially more vulnerable to being abused, exploited or harmed in other ways by the deplorable predators who seek them out,” said DPS Director Steven McCraw. “DPS is committed to pursuing the criminals who participate in the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children, and this premier interdiction program has been crucial to our efforts to detect and rescue endangered children.”
Launched in 2009, the IPC program is designed to teach troopers and other law enforcement officers how to recognize indicators of endangered children who do not exhibit obvious signs of abuse. This program offers invaluable and sophisticated training created to assist law enforcement officers in identifying and recovering missing or exploited children, and arresting suspects for sexual offenses against children.
As a result of this training, DPS has initiated more than 50 criminal investigations, and recovered 160 missing and exploited children since the program’s inception. In 2014 alone, 48 children were recovered by DPS in Texas. Throughout the years, the IPC program has been responsible for uncovering crimes affecting children and arresting the perpetrators in instances involving:
- Possession of child pornography
- Sexual assault of a child
- Human trafficking/commercial sexual exploitation of children
- Violation of registered sex offender requirements
- Enticing a child
To date, DPS has provided the IPC training to its own officers as well as other law enforcement, including more than 4,577 officers in Texas and approximately 4,519 officers outside of Texas, nationally and internationally. In addition in 2014, DPS offered the first IPC train-the-trainer class.
Also in 2014, DPS established the Texas Crimes Against Children Center to provide support to local, state and federal partners on investigations related to missing and exploited children, the trafficking of children, child abductions and other high-risk threats to children.
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