Controversial vigilante Justin Payne is teaming up with a local group to try to “out” pedophiles to the police.
Payne drove to Calgary from Toronto in hopes of catching just one suspect. He finds them by posing as an under-aged girl on dating sites, and sees who responds.
“I'll inform them within two or three messages that I am 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 and I just wait and then sometimes its right away, sometimes it’s just a day I’ll wait and they will get back to me and it will continue from there,” he said.
He recently drove over 4,000 kilometres from Toronto to Vancouver Island to make a bust. A video shows Payne confronting a man from Campbell River who thought he had been speaking with a 14-year-old boy for the past year. The legal age of consent in B.C. is 16. Payne has handed his evidence over to the authorities, and police confirm they are investigating.
“I don’t believe that enough is being done,” he said. “I don’t blame our police or anything like that, its old laws that are being abided by now that are allowing people to commit these acts.”
Payne’s online following has spawned spin off groups like Calgary-based Creep Catchers, recently back in the news after their Surrey, B.C. chapter caught a member of the RCMP in a sting. Constable Dario Devic is now charged with child luring, and Payne is teaming up with Creep Catchers while he is here.
“To me, Justin Payne is a whole new thing because he’s the one who inspired me to start what I’ve started,” said Dawson Raymond, Creep Catchers. “It was definitely nice to do it with the person that I admire.”
While Calgary police confirm they are looking into some of the group’s allegations, they don't condone this kind of vigilantism, saying it can be extremely dangerous.
