New Mexico Office of the Attorney General ICAC HERO Program

The National Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force Program consists of State and local law enforcement task forces dedicated to developing effective responses to online enticement of children by sexual predators, child exploitation, and child obscenity and pornography cases. The goal of this initiative is to hire wounded, injured, or ill veterans to (1) serve as analysts to enhance the digital forensic examination capacity of select ICAC task forces; (2) improve task force effectiveness to prevent, interdict, investigate, and prosecute Internet crimes against children and technology-facilitated child exploitation; and (3) reduce forensic examination backlogs and/or increase the number of forensic exams completed by ICAC task forces during the project period. OJJDP requires agencies to select personnel for the position(s) from a pool of eligible HERO Child Rescue Corps candidates; however, task forces that are unable to fill the position with a HERO candidate may be permitted to consider other identified wounded, injured, or ill veteran candidates.

The New Mexico Office of the Attorney General (NMOAG) is the lead agency for the ICAC Task Force in New Mexico. They were previously awarded funds to hire a wounded, injured, or ill veteran to serve as a forensic analyst. The NMOAG will use these FY 2018 funds to continue the on-going support of the protection of children from exploitation via technology by providing continued employment for the currently hired forensic analyst. The funding will support and enhance the existing digital forensics efforts with the identification, apprehension, and prosecution of child sexual predators statewide. The target population benefiting from this effort are children, who are victims of Internet exploitation. This program will increase the number of forensic examinations completed, reduce the backlog of cases awaiting forensic examinations and increase the number of cases prosecuted as a result of enhanced forensic capacity. Measurements of these goals and objectives will be collected monthly for ICAC statistics. Funds will not be used for research.
CA/CF