Last week, 35-year-old James Robert Wissmann IV pleaded guilty to federal child porn charges. Wissman was arrested by federal investigators while he was a police officer for the city of Baltimore, Maryland.
Wissmann was said to have used a mobile app to share child porn images. When the app found his account they would shut it down but Wissmann would just create a new one. The app in question finally contacted the NCMEC who in turn contacted authorities.
I was unable to find any indication as to what app Wissmann was using but you tell me if any of this sounds familiar…
According to his guilty plea, Wissmann created accounts using fake names and fake email addresses on an app that allows users to join a “room” where they can message, video chat, view videos and images, share files, and use those accounts to distribute and receive files of child pornography.
If I had to hazard a guess, and I will, I’d have to imagine it’s the mobile messaging app that’s home to a cubic ass-ton of sex offenders, pedophiles, and child porn collectors. If you haven’t grasped my subtlety, it’s probably Kik. And while Kik may have reported Wissmann to the NCMEC, it still doesn’t seem like they’re doing much more to try to prevent this behavior on their platform from happening in the first place.
As far as Wissmann being a cop goes, while I have respect for the good officers putting their lives on the line every day, there are way too many ‘bad apples’ who are tarnishing the badge. If 10% of the 800,000 police officers in the United States are bad apples, that’s still 80,000 bad cops.
In my opinion, one of the ways to correct this is to change the hiring process for police. Too many cops are hired because they know someone who can get them into the force. There is too much nepotism and cronyism in many police departments and needs to end. This is how old boy networks are formed and how good cops end up protecting bad cops then becoming bad cops themselves.
Thanks to Sabrina for the tip.
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 