Cyberspace ‘Sheriff’ Patrols Computer Frontier : Law enforcement: He has investigated more than a dozen computer crimes, including murder solicitation, child pornography and rape.

In an expanse of rolling hills and farmland on the edge of Amish country, the Police Department’s typical week means a theft, a bad check, maybe a stolen car.

Violence? Rare. Murder? Not since the 1970s.

But a typical day in Warwick Township finds the police chief pursuing pedophiles, rapists, big-time fraud artists and even vampire-style killers.

Meet Alfred O. Olsen, one of a few self-appointed sheriffs patrolling America’s latest rough-and-tumble boom town: cyberspace, the “world” created by millions of communicating computers.

“This is a frontier without boundaries. It breaks down all the traditional jurisdictional restrictions,” said Olsen, a 40-year-old former New Jersey police officer. “We’re walking a new beat in a neighborhood without an end.”

Local law enforcement, accustomed to nabbing crooks with old-fashioned brawn and clue gathering, is discovering it needs to track electronic footprints to find child pornography and invitations to murder.

“The more people use computers, the more they find ways to abuse things,” said Rick Sigurdson, an Internal Revenue Service investigator who is chairman of the Federal Computer Investigations Committee, an umbrella group of law enforcement officers.

Olsen’s interest began in 1990, when Florida police investigating several vampire-style killings found in suspect John Crutchley’s computer a map leading to a body--in Warwick Township.

Authorities never found the body, but Olsen was intrigued by the case anyway. Crutchley pleaded guilty to rape, and police said he lured victims to his home with his own computer “bulletin-board service.”

Olsen already had a computer, his daughter’s, “so I bought a modem for 50 bucks and I started.”

Today, on his own initiative, Olsen scours cyberspace for illicit activity, particularly sex crimes involving pedophilia. Mindful of his local responsibilities, he does most of his computer work on his own time; when he becomes aware of crimes, he offers his help to the proper jurisdictions.

He’s found a lot to investigate, from guidelines on killing parents to images of men having sex with children.

“We’re rapidly approaching the point where there’s a physical world and an electronic world. And they’re doing exactly the same things,” Olsen said. “And one of those things is sex.”

In one prosecution, a California man operated a bulletin board to lure youthful rape victims to his home. One officer logged on posing as a 15-year-old boy while Olsen signed on from Lititz portraying a fellow pedophile.

The suspect was simultaneously corresponding with the “boy” and sending Olsen messages about his intentions to rape. Police got him when he tried to attack an 18-year-old police cadet sent to his house undercover.

Olsen went to California to testify but said he could have tried the case at home.

“Until now, everything has had a base in physical presence,” he said. “Now, what exists where? Where do you take possession? Where does the crime occur? These are questions we’re going to have to answer.”

Experts in fighting computer crime love officers like Olsen.

“Here’s a police officer in a small town who has taken on this very aggressive role to try and fill a void,” said Ken Lanning, a specialist at the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit in Quantico, Va. “It takes a special kind of police officer to know how to communicate this way.”

Leaders of the on-line community welcome police but prescribe a careful approach.

“There is a culture gap between law enforcement and the electronic communities it’s trying to police,” said Mike Godwin, counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group.

“I think it’s important they be involved. If they’re not, that vastly increases the risk that they’ll misunderstand some conduct they see or hear about,” Godwin said.

He predicts few problems in adapting.

“Crimes committed in cyberspace will be mapped to our existing understanding of the law,” Godwin said. “But we need to know how clear the map is. If I invade your computer, is that burglary or trespass?”

Olsen has been involved in more than a dozen criminal investigations involving computers. In his off time, he tours the country teaching other officers how to spot and fight computer crime.

“It’s going to require a totally new law enforcement officer. The ham-fisted guy who goes in and breaks up a bar brawl is not the same guy who tracks computer child pornography,” Olsen said.

“You still need the people who can dig ditches. You still need people to flip the hamburgers in law enforcement,” he said. “You need all you originally had, but more.”