VIDEO: Child Porn Arrests Up in Kentucky as State Police Beefs Up Forces

Recent high-profile child-porn arrests in Louisville and Indiana momentarily focus a spotlight on a crime that Kentucky police and courts have seen steadily grow — climbing over 10 years from 250 charges to 2,400 last year, reports the Courier-Journal.

The last month has seen the downfall of ex-Subway spokesman Jared Fogle in Indiana, the guilty plea by former Trinity High School teacher Patrick Newman on dozens of child porn charges and the arrest of St. Margaret Mary priest Stephen Pohl, who was investigated by the FBI Cyber Crimes Unit. But dozens of similar cases are handled in courts across the state each year.

Through mid-July, 31 people were arrested on such porn possession charges by Kentucky State Police's Electronic Crime Branch — that's more suspects than the branch arrested in any one of the last four years, according to police data.

"I could probably keep tenfold busy," said branch commander Lt. Jeremy Murrell. "The more people we have in these roles the more potential predators we can put in jail."

That bump can be attributed to an increased number of branch detectives doing proactive work to catch online predators, he said.