10 Jan 16th-Jan 22nd, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Facebook but did not hear back.) For months after, the teen boy contacted Billman pretending to be a girl, whom Billman believed to be in her late teens to early 20s, according to the police report. The boy told police that Billman made sexual remarks in their correspondence. Billman told New Times he didn’t remember if he made sexual remarks toward the caller, but said he “didn’t make the conversation” and “just followed along,” though the “girl” on the other end “alluded to a lot of things.” In his report, Scottsdale police officer Nicholas Zermeno noted “there was nothing sexual in the chats between the two.” Officer Nicholas Skalicky added that messages included “just normal selfie pictures with no nudity.” The night of their encounter, Billman drove his black truck into the Walmart parking lot, talking to the “girl” on the phone as he did. As he circled the lot, Billman spotted the Toyota SUV he was meeting. A young man stood next to the car talking on the phone. Looking closer, Billman realized the young man was talking to him. “You’re not even a girl,” Billman recalled telling the boy over the phone. “I don’t know what you guys are up to but I’m out of here.” Scared that “they were trying to rob me and beat me up,” Billman turned his truck around. As he left, he said, around 10 young boys jumped out from behind a trailer in the lot and started running toward him. One threw a rock, breaking his back window. Two Toyota SUVs gave chase, flashing their high beams at him. Scottsdale police intercepted Billman a few miles away. Police made no arrests resulting from the confrontation. Billman was cited for speeding, which he denies doing. His encounter, plus several others police had been forced to respond to, led a Scottsdale police spokesperson to put out a mass email not long after. Its message: Kids, please cut this shit out. Multiple cases in the Valley Over the past year, police in Scottsdale and Phoenix have responded to a combined six “To Catch a Predator” trend encounters. Phoenix has had four, and the department said it has filed charges for luring a minor for sexual exploitation in three of them. New Times has requested but not yet received documents related to those cases from Phoenix police and from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office. Scottsdale has dealt with two such inci- dents. In August the department issued a warning. In a mass email, Scottsdale police spokesperson Allison Sempsis urged community members to do what might seem obvious: Don’t “initiate their own ‘to catch a predator’ investigations online or arrange meet-ups with the alleged predator.” In an interview with New Times, Sempsis said she’s heard from residents who justify the stings by saying “somebody needs to do it.” She wants them to know that Scottsdale police are taking action. The agency has a unit focused on child sex trafficking and similar operations. If teen- agers find themselves communicating with a potential predator, Sempis said they should call the police. TikTok-driven vigilante justice is not only dangerous, she said, but it could make a legitimate case more difficult to prosecute. “That way we can do our investigation and develop a probable cause through investigation techniques to make that arrest and bring this person to justice,” Sempsis said. “You never know what’s going to happen. You never know who’s showing up.” The boy who lured Billman still has active social media accounts, including a TikTok account with thousands of views. Billman said he’s seen the videos of his confrontation, which were sent to him by friends. Those videos no longer appear on the teen’s social media accounts. If they’ve been deleted, that might be a sign that the authorities’ message got through. Then again, when police spoke with the teen who lured Billman, he “did not seem to grasp the severity of the situa- tion he caused,” Officer Deven Fellows wrote in the police report. “During my conversation with him, it was clear that this incident started as part of a ‘TikTok’ inspired idea, that he wanted to re-create for social media attention.” Social Media Stings from p 8 Scottsdale police spokesperson Allison Sempis stresses that people should leave investigating child sex predators to the cops. (Courtesy of Manny Marko/Flickr/CC BY 2.0)
