We're here to help protect Bakersfield form the vastly growing number of child predators here in our town. We have been told by Bakersfield PD that they will not take anymore police reports on child predators because they arent actually talking to a child and instead are talking to one our decoys. Their words exactly "we can not file a report on this situation due to the fact that this man was not talking to a child but was instead talking to your decoy. There is no actual crime being committed as he is not talking with a minor." Section 288(a) prohibits committing "any lewd or lascivious act" with a minor child under 14 years of age. "Lewd or lascivious" generally refers to acts of a sexual nature. Child molestation is an extremely serious offense, and even merely being charged with the crime can have personal and professional consequences. Therefore even him having the intent to have sex with a minor and talking to what he believe is a minor is a felony and many other police stations do arrests on this here in California but Bakersfield PD will not do it. The legal term "lewd and lascivious" typically refers to a crime which occurs when an adult has sexual contact with an underage child. A violation of PC 288(a) when the victim is under 14 years old is always a felony and a "strike" under California's Three Strikes Law. Bakersfield just put human trafficking into the 3 strike law but won't arrest a child predator that is potentially meeting many children here. If we can get a large number of people to sign this petition then it will show BPD that they need to change what they are doing because they have also told us in our last predator catch that it isn't their priority and they can't have an officer with us at the moment. They are telling us that protecting our children isn't their priority but they get paid by our tax dollars. This needs to be changed as it's a huge problem here.
