(NECN: Josh Brogadir) - It was a massive sweep.
With the help of the Feds, state and local police in Massachusetts tried to get men who share images of young children off the streets and in jail.
“By putting these images out there, what may happen is somebody might say, hey, that guy is a coach, that guy is my neighbor and the kids are always over there. And I always wonder, it's always creepy, or it's always this or it's always that,” said Detective Daniel Fagan, of Boston Police’s Crimes Against Children Unit.
These are the faces in front of the computer screens, accused of viewing the innocent children on them.
More than 30 men were arrested in the past week in Operation Corral, the largest child pornography sting in MA history.
“These people are your next-door neighbors. These people look just like everyone else and they're doing these things under the cover of their own homes,” said Col. Marian McGovern, the superintendent of Mass. State Police.
And those homes are in cities and towns all over the Commonwealth, from Stockbridge to Scituate, Oak Bluffs to Haverhill.
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We were hoping to speak to one or more of these guys to talk about the arrests.
We went to East Boston - one address, after another.
To Revere, no one home.
And one man, Jose Salgado has been a TSA screener at Logan since 2006.
He was arrested on child porn charges.
The TSA released a statement saying in part, "Upon learning of these charges, TSA took immediate action and the individual is not working at the airport."
No one answered his door in Chelsea, but we spoke briefly with his neighbor, who said she saw police last week, and told us he's a nice man.
We then saw a camera flash from a second floor window at Salgado's home.
Still no one came to the door.
Investigators tell us, despite the successful sweep, their work is far from over.
“The criminals have gravitated towards new technology, use of encryption, we have to stay up not only with what's coming out on the market, what is used by the criminals, but how all those things work,” said John MacKinnon of Homeland Security Investigations.
And in fact the investigation generated many new leads, further proof with Operation Corral that people having and passing along child porn can live in any neighborhood, anywhere at all.
Authorities tell us several of these men have been booked and are in jail, some made bail and have been released, while others have been summonsed to appear in court in the coming weeks.
