HOMER — A city man is facing a felony charge of possessing child pornography after state police investigated tips from The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to the department.
Troopers arrested Patrick W. Clarke Jr., 22, of Cortland after executing a search warrant Monday at a Homer residence, said Trooper Aga Dembinska, a public information officer with the state police.
Troopers arrived at 6 a.m. and arrested Clarke at 7:43 a.m., according to the online state police blotter.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children receives anonymous online tips of child pornography, which the center terms “child sexual abuse imagery,” and forwards them to local law enforcement to investigate, according to the group’s website.
After state police received tips regarding Clarke, investigators opened an initial case, wrote Dembinska in an email. Investigators from the agency’s Computer Crimes Unit and the Homer barracks, as well as Homer troopers, then executed the search warrant, she wrote.
“Investigators did locate images that depicted child pornography,” Dembinska said. “As a result, Patrick W. Clarke Jr. was arrested.”
Clarke was charged with possessing a sexual performance of a child less than 16 years of age, arraigned in Homer Town court and issued a ticket to reappear Tuesday in court.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children started its CyberTipline in 1998 and had received more than 42.9 million tips as of November 2018, according to the website’s most recent data. The center’s Child Victim Identification Program has reviewed more than 267 million images of child pornography since 2002 and police have identified more than 15,800 children.
Those who would like to report incidents of child pornography or child sexual abuse anonymously may do so at https://report.cybertip.org/
