Aug. 23—An unofficial task force is targeting people who view, share or make child pornography in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley. The group is anchored by Lewiston Police Department detectives and is partnered with the FBI, Moscow Police Department and Nez Perce County Prosecutors Office.
That queasy feeling you get from so many troubling headlines is an indication that the task force is making a difference.
In 2023, the group arrested one man for possession of child pornography. They arrested eight in 2024, and four so far this year.
These arrests are significant for a city of just 35,000 people. And the community is safer as child predators are pulled out of the shadows and into the justice system’s spotlight.
“I became a detective in 2015,” said LPD Det. Cody Bloomsburg. “One of my first cases — I really don’t want to talk about — involved this. I had interviewed the child victim and I interviewed the suspect. Yeah, it stuck with me forever.”
Bloomsburg took basic training to qualify for cybertips and began adding child porn cases to his workload. The crew for the “unofficial task force” began to take shape. After a few years with no computer forensic specialist, Det. Zach Thomas showed up at the LPD.
Soon a valuable federal partner, FBI Agent Rob Hille, joined the mix in 2022. They can expand forensic computer capacity by relying on the Moscow Police Department’s forensic detectives, Lawrence Mowery and Andrew Fox.
And, NPC Chief Criminal Prosecutor April Smith is an important partner as the person who turns the investigative work into state and federal court convictions.
Bloomsburg and Thomas are the core “task force,” said their boss, Det. Sgt. Nick Eylar.
The task force is unofficial because they all have a full load of other investigative work: murder, robbery, aggravated assaults.
The computer experts
You need computer experts to search hard-drives and unlock cellphones to find evidence for these crimes. From 2019 to 2021, there was no forensic computer detective at LPD. When Chief Jason Kuzik took the department’s helm in 2022, he brought on Thomas and sent him to training. Also, the department had thousands of dollars worth of equipment donated by the FBI, along with purchasing about $30,000 of computer equipment.
“In 2022, the band was together, and from there, Zach has gotten exponentially better at his job when it comes to mobile devices. Zach is outstanding,” Bloomsburg said.
Thomas, like everyone else, spends more than 80% of his time on other cases, and sharing his expertise with other area law enforcement. His specialty is cracking into cellphones.
Moscow police have different equipment and are pros with computer laptops and such. Thomas, holding a cellphone, explained that cellphones present a different challenge: “At the most basic level, it’s all ones and zeros, but once you get a few levels up, like this is designed for you not to be able to break into it if I lose it.”
Gleaning cellphones and computers for evidence is a crucial component of building cases. When coupled with the strong interrogation skills of Bloomsburg and Hille, the group has taken persuasive evidence to prosecutors.
Real victims
These kinds of crimes may seem less visceral than what police call “touch crimes,” such as groping or rape. But evey illegal image was made of a real child, which creates Child Sexual Abuse Material, commonly called child porn.
The one 2023 arrest culminated last month into the federal conviction of Ronald L. Asker Jr., 57, of Lewiston, for possession of child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge David C. Nye sentenced Asker to three years in prison to be followed by 15 years of parole.