Humberside Police arrest seven in Lincolnshire over online sex offences

Humberside Police have arrested seven people in Lincolnshire as part of a targeted force-wide operation to tackle online sex offences over the last three weeks.

In total, 15 people were arrested by the force, with six from North East Lincolnshire and one in North Lincolnshire. The remaining eight people were arrested in the Humberside Police force area, but outside of Lincolnshire.

Humberside Police are seeing more online crime than they have historically.

Detectives from the force’s Internet Sex Offenders Team have been busy gathering evidence. Teams have been out seizing digital devices, making arrests and conducting interviews to help further investigations and build up strong cases to put before the courts.

Inspector Jayne Goodens said: “My team deal with some of the most serious online offences, crimes that have a long-lasting and in some cases devastating impact on their often vulnerable victims.

“This has been a really successful few weeks for my team with arrests and voluntary interviews enabling us to progress a number of our ongoing investigations, helping us to protect children and other vulnerable victims.

“With smart phones and tablet computers more popular than ever, online crime is something that we do see more of than we historically have and we have specially trained teams to deal with all types of online crime.

“We work diligently to gather every bit of evidence available, in what are generally incredibly complex cases often with victims and offenders in different parts of the country.”

Anyone wanting to report a crime to Humberside Police should call 101, or in an emergency 999, or anonymously through the independent charity Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.

Anyone worried about online sexual abuse or the way someone has been communicating with them or a loved one online, should read the further information available here.