West Midlands detectives destroy child porn images

Oct 6 2009 by Mark Cowan, Birmingham Post

More than 1.5 million images featuring some of the most horrific abuse of children seized by West Midlands detectives in the past year have been destroyed.

Officers from the Child Exploitation and Investigation Team, who target the region’s worst child sex offenders, held a destruction day to ensure the images could never return to the streets.

The seven-strong team investigate offences of rape, grooming, and distributing indecent images of children.

Since 2007, they have carried out 48 proactive operations and brought to justice 54 people who pose harm to children.

During the investigations, the team has seized scores of computers, mobile phones and compact discs full of images of child abuse.

Following the completion of the investigations, the compact discs and computers were taken away for incineration. Det Sgt Westley Martin, who leads the team, said: “Each image represents a child somewhere in the world that has been abused or sexually exploited and so destroying these images can help to stop the perpetual abuse of those children.”

However, some of the computers seized from paedophiles have now been given to the team to help them with further investigations.