More? Four Men In Amarillo Busted For Sex Charges With Minor.

I lead off with a question. When is it going to end?

There are crimes that are heinous in nature, then those heinous in thought.

Unfortunately, this is one of those that I always view as both. Anything sexual regarding a minor just makes me cringe.

Maybe it's because I have three of my own. Maybe it's just because it's one of those things that I can't even fathom thinking about. However, it's a real issue and it seems to be growing.

4 Amarillo men were arrested for online soliciting of a minor the other day, and one of them was a City of Amarillo worker.

Garrett Simpson, Darrin Barnett, Christopher Quintana and James Hayes were charged with online solicitation of a minor on January 11th.

This was a joint effort between local, state and federal authorities. They usually are. There are a lot of deep, dark places on the web where this thing goes on, and it take all of them to track them down.

The sting operation took place four days earlier on January 7th. Police targeted people that were looking for underage girls online to perform sexual acts.

What's scary about this is they found FOUR people in Amarillo alone. We aren't a big city, a population of just 200,000 people. So yeah, maybe in the grand scheme of things four people doesn't seem like a huge deal. It's 1 in every 50,000 people here in the city.

Think about how small Amarillo is though. I mean one of these men could've easily been your neighbor. They could've been spread out across the city. And while we don't know anything about the worker for City of Amarillo, what if it was someone who worked out in the field and entered peoples houses?

All in all, I'm saying there is an epidemic problem in the country, and right here in Amarillo. Please stay vigilant with your kids. Monitor their online interactions, keep them away from chatting with people they don't personally know, review text messages, etc. You can never be too safe.