Twenty-One Custody Names and a Prosecutor’s Review: Inside Snohomish County’s Operation Guardian
Veintiuno personas fueron detenidas en el condado de Snohomish en la última semana de junio, y la Patrulla Estatal de Washington puso sus nombres en una hoja pública antes de que la mayoría de ellos tuvieran un documento oficial de carga. The operation was called Operation Guardian. Fue expulsado de Edmonds por el equipo de tareas de niños desaparecidos y explotados de la patrulla, el afiliado del estado del programa de crímenes contra niños en Internet. Por la tarde del 1 de julio, las salas de prensa locales tenían la liberación, una lista de estilo de reserva, y una promesa de que la Fiscalía del Condado Snohomish decidiría qué casos, si los hay, se convierten en cargos criminales.
That last sentence is the part that still governs the story. An arrest in a chat-based sting is not a conviction. It is not even, by itself, a filed information. The patrol’s July 1 announcement Dijo que el esfuerzo de varios días identificó a las personas presuntamente implicadas en el abuso sexual y la explotación de los niños, y que los fiscales revisarían los archivos. A finales de septiembre, la patrulla no ha publicado una hoja de seguimiento emparejando cada nombre con una carga presentada. Los lectores que buscan un marcador de pleas culpables no encontrarán una en la liberación pública. Lo que encontrarán es una lista de custodia, un menú de estatutos y un equipo de tareas que dice que ha estado haciendo este trabajo desde agosto de 2015.
What the patrol says the week was built to catch
La liberación, fechada el 30 de junio y publicada al día siguiente, enumera los investigadores de crímenes primarios que estaban trabajando. Son leyes de Washington, no eslóganes: intento de violación de un niño en primer grado, intento de violación de un niño en segundo grado, abuso sexual comercial de un menor, comunicación con un menor con fines inmorales, explotación sexual de un menor y posesión ilegal de un arma de fuego. El Lynnwood Times También informó de que algunos registros de reservas llevaban un recuento de sustancias controladas para distribuir metanfetamina a un menor. Esa línea extra no aparece en la lista de estatutos de la patrulla. It is a reminder that jail paperwork and a press release are not the same document.
El jefe John Batiste dijo que los detectives trabajaban con socios locales y federales para identificar y arrestar a personas que se apoderan de los más vulnerables, y que proteger a los niños de La explotación es uno de los trabajos más importantes que tienen las fuerzas del orden. El subjefe Josh McClure del Departamento de Policía de Edmonds dijo que la ciudad estaba orgullosa de acoger la base de operaciones y llamó a la semana una demostración extraordinaria de colaboración de seguridad pública. Esas frases son el marco oficial. No describen lo que un sospechoso escribió, lo que dijo una cuenta secreta, o si alguna vez ocurrió una reunión en particular. KING 5's coverage of the week said detectives posed as children online and that meetings were arranged across southern Snohomish County, including public parks in Mountlake Terrace y un estacionamiento en Edmonds. La estación también dijo que no nombraría a personas que no habían sido acusadas formalmente. La patrulla los llamó. Ambas opciones son editoriales. Sólo un archivo de la corte ordenará las conversaciones que un jurado puede escuchar.
The custody list, as the patrol published it
The ages on the sheet run from 22 to 65. The Seattle Times used that range and stopped there. The patrol went further. Taken into custody, in the order the release gives them: Remington Le, 23, of Lake Stevens; Guillermo Mejian Perez, 22, of Shoreline; Karl Walker, 60, of Mountlake Terrace; Paul Hansen, 65, of Kirkland; Angel Luna, 63, of Mountlake Terrace; Jose Anaya Beltran, 37, of Lynnwood; Hector Marroquin Herrera, 31, of Lynnwood; Ishan Budhathoki, 28, of Seattle; Carlos Lara Maddigales, 34, of Mountlake Terrace; Humberto Hernandez-Hernandez, 38, of Lynnwood; Jimy De Paz Perez, 24, of Burien; Hector Galvez Quevedo, 44, of Shoreline; Daniel Martinez, 52, of El Paso, Texas; Antonio Yepes Ponce, 37, of Zapotitlan De Vadillo, Mexico; Seyram Dogbey, 32, of Ridgeland, Mississippi; Nicholas Dale, 30, of Lynnwood; Hanzel Paningbatan, 38, of Everett; Dillon Wade, 28, of Arlington; Anthony Morales Velasco, 28, of Glennwood, using the patrol’s spelling; Asim Bera, 56, of Seattle; and Benjamin Lopez Sanchez, 28, of Tacoma.
None of those names is a finding of guilt. Several live well outside Snohomish County. Two are listed with hometowns in other states, and one with a town in Mexico. That spread is what an internet-crimes operation looks like when the chat is the meeting place and the arrest is arranged for a parking lot. It is also why a single police department cannot run the week alone.
Thirty agencies, one task force, and a firefighter on leave
The patrol’s partner list is long on purpose. It includes the Edmonds, Bothell, Everett, Fife, Kirkland, Lakewood, Lake Stevens, Lynnwood, Marysville, Mountlake Terrace, Monroe, Mukilteo, Othello, Post Falls, Puyallup, Redmond, Renton, Tacoma, and Washougal police departments, the Seattle Police Department, the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, the Stevens County Sheriff’s Office, the Kittitas County Sheriff’s Office, the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, the Washington State Department of Corrections, and the Snohomish County Prosecutor’s Office. Ward Media noted the Chelan County Sheriff’s Office among the out-of-county hands. Post Falls is in Idaho. The geography is the point: the chat does not stop at a county line, and neither did the roster.
One name on the list drew a second story. The Herald reported that Dillon Wade, 28, of Arlington, a Marysville Fire District firefighter, was booked into the Snohomish County Jail on June 30 on a felony allegation of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes. Jail records cited by the paper put his bond at $100,000. He posted it and was released on July 2. The fire district said it knew about the serious allegation, and it placed him on administrative leave pending the investigation. A booking charge is still an allegation. It is also the only Operation Guardian name, so far, that a local employer has had to explain in public.
The patrol says that since the task force’s first operation in August 2015, the legislatively funded unit has netted nearly 400 arrests and removed numerous children from danger. That cumulative number is the context for a week that produced 21 custodies. It is not a claim that 400 cases ended in prison. Task-force arithmetic counts interventions. Court arithmetic counts charges, pleas, trials, and dismissals. Those columns do not move at the same speed.
Why the charging desk matters more than the headline
Sting cases live or die on the transcript. Washington criminalizes an attempt to rape a child, and it criminalizes communication with a minor for immoral purposes, including when the «minor» is an officer. That legal structure is why these operations exist. It is also why a careful prosecutor reads the chat before signing a charge. Did the officer state an age? Did the suspect agree to a sex act with someone described as that age? Was there a gun in the car when officers made the stop, which would explain the firearm statute sitting on the same list? Did anyone actually meet a child, or was the entire offense the agreement to meet? The patrol has not published those distinctions name by name. Until it does, or until the prosecutor files, the honest public record is the custody list and the menu of statutes.
People with information about the people named, or about victims who might be connected to the cases, were pointed by the patrol to me***@****wa.gov. The sentence on the patrol’s page says «METCF» and then gives the mailbox mectf. Use the mailbox as printed. Tips are how a task force built on chats finds the cases that are not chats, the ones in which a real child was already being harmed.
That is the same reason a sting week should not be covered as if it cleaned a county. The AEGIS Alliance has spent years on the cases that do not arrive as a parking-lot arrest, from the networks described as hiding in plain sight to the account takedowns that barely made a national newscast. A New Jersey sweep branded Operation Bad Santa produced charges, not just bookings. Operation Guardian, three months after the Edmonds week, is still mostly a booking story. That is not a criticism of the detectives. It is a description of where the paper stands.
What a reader can say without getting ahead of the court
It is fair to say that more than 30 agencies spent days in and around Edmonds on internet crimes against children. It is fair to say 21 people were taken into custody, that their ages ran from 22 to 65, and that the patrol published the names. It is fair to say prosecutors in Snohomish County were handed the files. It is not fair to say all 21 have been convicted, or that each person faces the same count, or that a firefighter’s administrative leave is a finding. The presumption of innocence applies to every name on that sheet until a court says otherwise.
The useful next document is not another recap of the press release. It is a charging decision, a dismissal, or a quiet return of the file. Anyone watching the crime desk or the U.S. news file at The AEGIS Alliance should treat Operation Guardian as open. The task force has nearly a decade of arrests behind it. This particular week still has to survive a prosecutor’s read of the chats.
