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An Omaha police officer admitted to La Vista investigators in a July interview that when he chatted online, those chats “sometimes” got sexually graphic.
The officer, David M. Kass, 26, denied ever knowingly having such chats with a minor. But Sarpy County authorities accuse him of having one July 13 with a person he'd been told was a 14-year-old girl.
The “girl” was actually a La Vista police investigator.
“I thought she was 24,” he told La Vista police during the recorded interview, which was played for the jury Tuesday afternoon in Sarpy County District Court. “I would not talk to someone that young.”
Kass is charged with child enticement by electronic communication device, a felony that carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. He is currently on unpaid administrative leave from the Omaha Police Department.
In opening arguments Tuesday afternoon, Kass' attorney, Alan Stoler, told jurors that Kass may have discussed sexual experiences in online chats, but he “was honestly conversing with individuals he believed to be adults.”
After all, Stoler said, Kass was visiting a Yahoo “adult romance” chat room, which requires people to be at least 18 years of age to enter. Stoler also said Kass “had no intention of meeting” the person played by a La Vista investigator and that Kass was chatting with two or three people at the same time.
Prosecutor Matt Lierman called Kass an “online predator” and told jurors that Kass initiated the chat and “knew the age of the girl at the beginning.” He also said Kass was persistent at keeping the conversation sexual.
According to Lierman, the beginning of the chat went something like this:
CHS1665 (a screen name authorities identified as Kass): A, S, L?
Mickigirl14 (the La Vista investigator posing as a teen girl): 14, F, Omaha
CHS1665: 25, M, Omaha
CHS1665: Too old?
Mickigirl14: For what?
CHS1665: For anything?
Lierman said “Mickigirl14” told Kass she was looking forward to going swimming at her grandma's house. Kass then asked if she was wearing a one-piece or two.
He eventually asked if she had a boyfriend, what kind of panties she wore and whether she had ever had oral sex.
Lierman said Kass continued “with perversion” and asked “Mickigirl14” if she'd ever had an orgasm and if she wanted to do sexual things.
La Vista Detective John Danderand testified that he posed as “Mickigirl14” and chatted with Kass from 10:11 a.m. to 11:40 a.m. that July morning.
Danderand set up the profile for “Mickigirl14” through Yahoo as a 19-year-old female but said the chat made it clear that “he” was a 14-year-old “she.”
When officers visited Kass' northwest Omaha home July 15 with a search warrant, Kass didn't remember much about the chat with “Mickigirl14,” Danderand said.
And when officers reminded him of some of the sexually explicit messages he typed, Kass, in the recorded interview, said: “There's no way in hell I would do anything like that with a minor.”
Kass graduated from the Omaha Police Academy in the fall of 2006 and worked as a patrol officer in the northwest precinct.
His trial continues today.
Contact the writer:
444-1336, leia.mendoza@owh.com
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