BPD officer teams with task force to work crimes against children

Batesville Police Department Investigator Brenda Bittle. Bittle is also a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children task force. (All images by Andrea Bruner, White River Now)

By Andrea Bruner, White River Now

Batesville Police Investigator Brenda Bittle dedicates her days to combing through an endless stream of photos and videos, driven by a single mission: catching child predators. For Bittle, this grueling work isn’t just a job — she firmly believes God created her for this exact purpose.

Bittle is a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, a collaborative network of state and local law enforcement agencies combatting child sexual exploitation and Internet crimes against children. ICAC handles everything from forensics and investigations to training, victim services, and public education.

Bittle said several months ago, an ICAC investigator in Little Rock had called about a child pornography case where the suspect was in Batesville. The investigator came to Batesville to go over the case, gathering evidence for search warrants.

Bittle said when she got the search warrants in hand, the BPD went to the residence, knocked on the door and searched the home. Sure enough, the officers found what they were looking for – image after image.

“We talked to him, and he confessed … to buying it off the Internet, off of real people that were selling it,” she said. “Some of it’s here in the States, but a lot of it comes from out of the country.”

Afterward, the investigator from Little Rock told her, “We’re looking for investigators – would you be interested?”

Bittle was. She went to Little Rock for training, then got set up with the statewide ICAC system. She said cases are usually assigned by area, although she noted that she is the only ICAC task force member in Independence and the surrounding counties.

“In a normal case, you’re not having to look at what happens out there (the victimization). In an ICAC case, you’re looking at the victims right there in front of you…” — Batesville Police Investigator Brenda Bittle, who is also a member of the Interned Crimes Against Children task force.

She said she recently worked on a case in another county, for example, working with law enforcement there. “I’ll do all the ICAC stuff, then get the search warrants to them, and they serve the search warrants for me,” she explained.

Bittle said these types of cases take a long time. “It’s just paperwork upon paperwork, upon paperwork. … They’re time-consuming, dealing a lot with the courts getting search warrants, and sitting and looking at the evidence, day in and day out. That’s the tough part. In a normal case, you’re not having to look at what happens out there (the victimization). In an ICAC case, you’re looking at the victims right there in front of you, videos and pictures, and you have to go through it all, and figure out how many counts you’ve got.”

With the case outside Independence County, she said 13,000 pictures and videos were found on a phone, but she’ll cap the number of charges on an individual at some point, saying, “You can only charge so much.”

Bittle said the social media companies are working more with investigators now to report cases. She estimated there are 15,000 child sexual exploitation cases in the state. “Last year, I had three, and this year already I’ve got three. So, there’s more out there – it’s just getting people to report it or social media letting us know that it’s there,” she said.

She said most cases are child porn, but it can include trafficking as well.

She said that with cellphones and social media, it’s much easier for people to obtain child porn, but said that it has always been around.

“I think it was always there. It was just harder to catch somebody – back in the day, I remember doing a big case where it was just VHS tapes. … We just see it more. And, of course, the technology has made it easier for people to get a hold of it.”

Even putting a child’s face on an adult’s naked body is computer-generated and can result in child porn charges, Bittle went on to say. “There’s a lot of that going on right now, too.”

“I think that’s why I’m here – it’s to protect the kids, because somebody’s got to. I’ve been doing this for 36 years, and most of it’s been child cases, but if somebody doesn’t do it, they’re gonna keep hurting kids out there. When you see little kids, they’re so innocent. And to think that somebody would hurt them is just beyond me. But that’s what drives me.”

Bittle said she believes God put her here to work on these cases.

“I think that’s why I’m here – it’s to protect the kids, because somebody’s got to. I’ve been doing this for 36 years, and most of it’s been child cases, but if somebody doesn’t do it, they’re gonna keep hurting kids out there. When you see little kids, they’re so innocent. And to think that somebody would hurt them is just beyond me. But that’s what drives me.

“Because when this all started, I was just a patrolman, and back in the early ’90s, you didn’t have that many sex crimes, but when you did, they were big ones.”

The sheriff at the time asked her to work the child cases, and that’s what set her on this path.

But from an early age, Bittle seemed destined to work in law enforcement. She said she was 4 years old when her family had gone on vacation, then returned to their home in Kansas City, only to find out their home had been burglarized.

“They had taken everything out of the house, and I remember my mom standing there just crying,” Bittle said. From that moment on, her parents said she wanted to be a police officer.

Once her dad retired from the military, Bittle said they moved to Greers Ferry to be closer to his family. Bittle graduated from West Side High School and attended college at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. When she put her applications out, the Independence County Sheriff’s Office was the first to call her.

She retired from the sheriff’s office in 2010, but said with a smile, “You see what I went back to – this is all I know.”

She said she continues to work sex crimes against children locally that come in through the hotline, as well as her other cases at the BPD. At the moment, she could have 30 open cases, including a couple of ICAC cases, and probably 80 percent of them will have charges filed. But, she said, probably only half of those are child sex crimes. The others could be burglaries or various other cases.

While she said she loves the job, it does take a toll, and she tries to take time off as needed. Some days, if she’s busy at the office, she’ll take a break and drive around with her music turned up; other times, she grabs any of the toys or pipe cleaners within arm’s reach of her chair.

“They (the state) have taught us to play with toys,” she said. “So, I’ve got toys set up all over my desk … and it seems to work.”

She said she also likes to fish, and she spends a lot of time in church; she is currently studying to be a deacon.

“Some of the stuff I look at, I think to myself, what are people thinking? That can’t be real. You know, because I think I’ve seen it all, and then the next case, no, I haven’t seen it all.”

Some days are frustrating, and she has cases where she doesn’t want to talk to a suspect because the details of the case are sickening, but she knows she has to sit across the table from him at some point, “and talk to him about things that are not normal. And keep a straight face. It’s tough.”

Bittle said every day is different. “I think that’s another reason I like it. I don’t have a typical day. Each case is different; each kid I talk to is different.”

“Investigator Brenda Bittle has demonstrated a strong commitment to protecting children and combating online exploitation through her work with ICAC Task Force.” — Capt. Fred Friar, Batesville Police Department

Her hardest case came a few years ago, a man who had molested a child for almost 10 years. The man was eventually convicted of rape and sentenced to 40 years. Bittle said it was someone she happened to know through connections around town

“Having to talk with (the victim) – that’s tough,” she said. “A lot of this is computer, and I might not know the children, but that one was tough. That was a big case.”

Bittle said Chief John Scarbrough has really pushed her child safety at the BPD, “and that is a big blessing for Batesville, that we’ve got somebody that backs me, or any officer that wants to get into working these kid cases, he’s all for it.

“I’m just trying to make Batesville safer for the kids that are around here,” she said.

Capt. Fred Friar, Bittle’s supervisor, praised her work, stating, “Investigator Brenda Bittle has demonstrated a strong commitment to protecting children and combating online exploitation through her work with ICAC Task Force.”

He said that since she has become a task force officer, Bittle has been assigned six ICAC-related investigations. Of those cases, four have been prosecuted within the local jurisdiction, while the remaining two were forwarded to the appropriate jurisdictions for further investigation and prosecution.

“Her efforts reflect diligence, professionalism, and dedication to collaborative law enforcement initiatives aimed at addressing internet crimes against children,” Friar added.