Illinois school employee arrested trying to meet Livonia teen for sex, tracked by Flock cameras
Livonia police car, left. File art of license plate reader camera.
FOX 2 - An Illinois man is charged with driving to Livonia to meet someone he thought was a 15-year-old for sex, but was actually an undercover officer.
The backstory:
Christopher Thomas Mertens was arrested on Monday after planning a meetup with a teen boy named "Caleb" at Beverly Park in Livonia, according to a criminal complaint.
Note: Details of this case may be disturbing for some readers.
Mertens, who is a maintenance worker at a high school and lives in Chicago, planned to go back with the teen to his parents' house while they were at work, to have sex.
Flock cameras – license plate readers – were used by authorities to track Mertens to Michigan, according to investigators.
The lead investigator works as part of the Livonia Undercover Resistance to Exploitation Unit which focuses on child predators. The undercover "Caleb" account used an AI-generated image of a teenage appearing boy.
Undercover Contacted by Mertens
Timeline:
The "Caleb" account first encountered a user named "Chris" which police say was Mertens on a dating application Taimi on Sept. 23.
The contact escalated to sexually explicit text messages on WhatsApp where the profile picture of Chris matched photos from Taimi.
Mertens was identified by the undercover using the Law Enforcement Information Network, Thomson Reuters CLEAR for phone number and Clearview AI for facial recognition.
More sexually explicit conversations followed, including an explicit photos of genitalia and masturbation by Mertens, the complaint said.
After being tracked on his drive with license plate reader cameras and further tests, Mertens was arrested at the park once he exited his vehicle Monday morning.
According to the complaint, Mertens said he believed he was meeting a 15-year-old boy.
He was charged with traveling with intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct.
For the criminal complaint, see below:
The Source: Information for this report is from a criminal complaint.