This week's ugly police mugshot comes from Iowa, but the 55-year-old pictured in accused of trying to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex right here in Orange County.
Carlton Earl Griner, who earned a sex offender label for having an eye for child porn in the Hawkeye State, has since relocated to Garden Grove, where he is accused of being the latest to fall for the Huntington Beach Police Department's craigslist sting.
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As close readers know, Surf City cops have a Chris Hansen-like knack for getting known and would-be pervs to communicate with officers posing online as 13-year-old girls. These virtual meetings inevitably lead to chats about sex, arrangements to meet in person and arrests of the men who show up not to find the youngest of teens but police officers dangling handcuffs.
That's what happened to Griner, according to the Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA). He is accused of placing an ad on craigslist soliciting sex earlier this month, swapping emails with who he believed to be a 13-year-old girl and arranging to meet “her” at a shopping center on Jan. 9. He was arrested upon arrival.
Now authorities fear Griner may have lured or tried to lure other children while in California. Anyone with information about this is asked to contact Huntington Beach Police Detective Steven Fong at 714.536.5960 or Supervising District Attorney Investigator Anthony Sosnowski
at 714.834.8794.
For now Griner, who was held in lieu of $100,000 bail pending arraignment scheduled this morning in Westminster, faces felony counts of contacting a child with intent to commit a lewd act, meeting a minor
with intent to engage in lewd conduct, and attempted lewd act upon a
child under 14 years old. Five years in prison could accompany a conviction.
So could mandatory lifetime sex offender
registration–in a second state.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.