The Logan County Sheriff’s Office (LCSO) said on Thursday that a member of an Indiana biker organization assisted in the arrest of a suspected child predator.
The LCSO posted on Facebook that they summoned law enforcement to an address in Magazine on November 25.
According to the LCSO, the caller claimed to be a member of Bikers Against Predators, an Indiana-based organization.
The biker group member then informed responding law enforcement that he was investigating 65-year-old Johnny Ray Hice, who was reportedly attempting to meet up with a 12-year-old girl, according to the LCSO.
Officers approached Hice, who allegedly handed them a text message with a photo of a naked female he assumed to be 12 or 13 years old, according to the post.
“After seeing the photo on his phone, Officer Elkins placed him under arrest and transported him to the Logan County Detention Center and he was booked in on the anticipated charge of distributing, possessing, or viewing of matter depicting sexually explicit conduct involving a child, a Class C felony,” the post said.
The LCSO announced the seizure of Hice’s phone and the planned extraction of its data. Following the extraction of the phone, the sheriff’s office anticipates additional charges.
The Logan County Detention Center is currently holding Hice under a $25,000 bond.
5NEWS contacted Logan County Sheriff Jason Massey, who said they welcome groups like this coming in to assist with cases, but they want to ensure it’s a collaborative effort.
“A lot of these folks have good hearts, and they’re wanting to expose these people. And we recognize that, and so we want them to work with us,” Massey said. “One thing I wish that they would do is that they would meet with us before they go up to the house. I wish they would show us what they have and so we can get with the prosecutor to find out if we need to get search warrants and things like that.”
He noted that in circumstances like this, law enforcement wants as much evidence as possible while ensuring that a suspect does not have time to delete it.
“Once you let suspects know what’s going on, getting rid of information becomes the next issue,” Massey said. “The more information you have that’s obtained through means that they can be shown in court, that the better prosecution we can have, the better case we can present to a jury, if it goes that far.”
“In the end, it’ll be a combined effort as we make sure that the files that we find on devices such as these are what our prosecutor can use in prosecuting people,” Massey added.
5NEWS also spoke with “Boots,” the head of Bikers Against Predators and the organization member who assisted in the arrest.
“Our outcome is just spreading awareness to the communities. I think that’s our number one goal. Obviously, convictions would be number two,” Boots said. “These individuals reach out to our decoy accounts on various social media sites, believing that they are communicating with an underage child arranging meetups or as sometimes, there’s more information that we do get about these individuals that lead us, even if the conversations aren’t actually graphic, that we believe that they could be involved in child sexual abuse material.”