Authorities use road sign clue to catch child predator

[Duke87]

Story

The agent noticed a blurry highway road sign in the window. It was his first, and best, clue. He and his colleagues set to work.

The road sign looked like a sunflower logo -- a clue that led agents to Kansas where the sunflower is the state flower.

And the first number on the sign was surely a 2. But the other numbers were too blurred to be sure which road it was.

"We began looking at the road sign. It really looked to most of us like a highway 203, and there was a highway 203 in Kansas, [but] when we got there, got off the plane the agent from Kansas said "it's not 203, we just drove the whole highway, the sign's not there.""

So Cole and the other agents got back on the road and started driving every highway in Kansas that starts with a 2.

If you look at the video at 1:33, you can see a screenshot of the CHM Highway Browser page for Kansas State Highways!

[agentsteel53]

An ICE spokeswoman said the girl is now safe and living with her parents. She added the suspect turned out to also be a minor --16 years old -- who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to serve 48 months in a juvenile facility.

fuck that.

if you're old enough to think "whoo-eee, gonna do me some rapin'!", then you're old enough to hang for it.

[Brandon]

An ICE spokeswoman said the girl is now safe and living with her parents. She added the suspect turned out to also be a minor --16 years old -- who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to serve 48 months in a juvenile facility.

fuck that.

if you're old enough to think "whoo-eee, gonna do me some rapin'!", then you're old enough to hang for it.

I favor full castration for it instead of hanging.  Something more along the lines of "to the pain" in The Princess Bride.  Use it, lose it, suffer the rest of your life for it.

[NE2]

This could not have happened in New Mexico. Good signage saves lives (or at least virginity/mental health).

[NE2]

Also: time for a federal grant for CHM?

[agentsteel53]

This could not have happened in New Mexico. Good signage saves lives (or at least virginity/mental health).

"that's a zia erroneously installed for US-64 - we've narrowed it down to precisely three possible locations."

[mgk920]

Gumshoe police work at its finest.



Mike

[Scott5114]

What we're all wondering...so if it wasn't K-203, what was it?

I wonder if they contacted KDOT at any point.

[NE2]

K-20. The video shows a clear shot.

[Brandon]

What we're all wondering...so if it wasn't K-203, what was it?

I wonder if they contacted KDOT at any point.

I'm trying to figure out why they even thought it was K-203 in the first place.  The shield is obviously two-digit sized, not three-digit sized as it is the same width as the directional banner above it.

[J N Winkler]

I'm trying to figure out why they even thought it was K-203 in the first place.  The shield is obviously two-digit sized, not three-digit sized as it is the same width as the directional banner above it.

They might have been based in a state where route shields are uniform in width regardless of digit count, and not even realized that three-digit shields exist.  For us this would be a rookie misconception, but these guys are in law enforcement and as such have to be generalists.  They might also have been working with out-of-date or incomplete resources, such as old MUTCD editions assuming two-digit for three-digit routes, or the 1972 FHWA leaflet showing state route shields using two-digit route designations only.

We are not exactly in a position to pitch stones ourselves--this community has not thoroughly assimilated the distinction between guide-sign and independent-mount shields, and as a result (to quote one example) we still don't have a 100% accurate list of which states allow a guide-sign three-digit shield to be wider than an independent-mount three-digit shield and by how much.

[agentsteel53]

actually, it's not clear at all to me that that is a two-digit banner.  I had thought it said '200'.  it turns out that motion blur superimposed two slightly misaligned shield images, yielding something that looks to have three digits.

(the banner also appears to have extra letters in it, though that is even less possible to make out.)

[Alps]

It looked like K-200 to me, although it was more of a 20).

[mgk920]

actually, it's not clear at all to me that that is a two-digit banner.  I had thought it said '200'.  it turns out that motion blur superimposed two slightly misaligned shield images, yielding something that looks to have three digits.

(the banner also appears to have extra letters in it, though that is even less possible to make out.)

I could easily make out the banner as the MUTCD-standard 'EAST', but for someone not 'local Roadgeek™' familiar with how those signs are made, I can easily see someone reading that as a three-digit number.  IMHO, I'm just glad that there was someone IN their Washington, DC office who was able to recognize that sign as a Kansas state route marker shield - those are cops, not civil/highway engineers, after all.

Mike

[Duke87]

You'd be surprised, actually. Agencies like the CIA employ people who are experts in all sorts of random minutia. There is apparently someone out there who is the expert on boxes and crates, and based on the size/shape of a container, how it's packaged, how it's transported, etc. can infer what sort of things it may contain.

For all we know there is an expert in road-related things employed by one of these agencies. If not, you can bet they are at least fully aware that people like us exist.

[Brandon]

We are not exactly in a position to pitch stones ourselves--this community has not thoroughly assimilated the distinction between guide-sign and independent-mount shields, and as a result (to quote one example) we still don't have a 100% accurate list of which states allow a guide-sign three-digit shield to be wider than an independent-mount three-digit shield and by how much.

Maybe it's time for such a list on the general forum?