Six men, including a daycare worker, Uber driver and Army veteran, were arrested after allegedly showing up to an undercover location to sexually batter children after communicating with detectives who were undercover as children and guardians, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office.
The week-long multi-agency undercover operation β including detectives from the Polk County Sheriff's Office, Lakeland Police Department, Haines City Police Department, Tampa Police Department, Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office, Lake County Sheriff's Office and Orange County Sheriff's Office β revealed that six men communicated and solicited who they thought were children or guardians on social media, mobile apps and online dating platforms, according to a press release.
Three of the men allegedly offered to pay hundreds of dollars to have sex with who they thought was a child. They came to a strange, undercover location thinking that they were going to encounter a or a or a year-old child," Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said in a news conference.
If it weren't for the outstanding work of the men and women of law enforcement, they absolutely would have attacked children had it not been an undercover operation. Of the six men from Central Florida, three of them said they are married, three have children and three reportedly brought condoms to the undercover meeting location, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office.
Here's a look at the 22 felony charges filed, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office:. Douglas Cooley allegedly chatted with an undercover detective who was posing as an adult with access to a year-old girl on social media and via cell phone, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. Cooley was booked into the Polk County Jail on the following charges:. Cooley is a former employee of an after-school daycare in Apopka, deputies said. Discovery After School issued the following statement regarding Cooley's arrest:.
