14 JULY 19, 2018 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Queens residents turns personal struggles into street justice
BY RYAN KELLEY
RKELLEY@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
TWITTER @R_KELLEY6
In one of his most popular Facebook
Live videos, Queens resident Tony
Blas talks to his thousands of viewers
as he searches for his latest target:
a 27-year-old man attempting to meet
up with a 15-year-old girl.
Blas, 36, fi nds the man sitting on a
railing in front of the Myrtle-Wyckoff
Avenues subway station on the Ridgewood/
Bushwick border. Just before
confronting him, Blas stretches his
neck, takes a deep breath, then lights
a cigarette. Although he has been executing
independent sting operations
to catch sexual predators in the act for
two months now, his anxiety in these
moments never goes away, he says.
Aft er this particular video caught
the attention of the local community
and quickly gained hundreds of thousands
of views, Blas sat down with
QNS on July 12 to explain his desire to
expose these "sickos," as he calls them.
"My biggest thing is exposing these
people to the public, letting them know
who they are," Blas said. "I don't call
them predators and child predators
and perverts and pedophiles because
I'm not the judge and the jury, they
haven't been convicted of anything
... but on my side, I've seen what this
man's intent was."
Originally from Brooklyn, Blas is a
plumber who works 15-hour days to
support his wife and 5-year-old daughter,
and protecting the girls in his life
certainly plays a role in his busts, he
said. But Blas is also a survivor who was
molested as a child and he knows several
people who have had online encounters
with predators, so that drove him to
create a profi le on an app called Tagged.
Blas pretended that he was a preteen
girl, he said, and men started messaging
him almost instantly. If the number
of men who were contacting him were
all infected with a disease instead, the
Center for Disease Control would declare
it an outbreak and quarantine
the neighborhood, Blas said.
At this point, however, Blas was still
in the research phase. He wanted to
be thorough and make sure he could
approach these men without breaking
any laws.
In fact, he has spoken to police on
many occasions to be sure that he isn't
doing anything illegal, and he has tried
to establish a working relationship
with them, he said. Collaborating with
a civilian in these cases is diffi cult for
police because it involves the civilian
gathering all of the evidence through
online chat logs, Blas explained.
When officers once confronted
him while he was wandering the
neighborhood about to make a bust,
however, Blas said their handshakes
spoke volumes aft er he explained what
he was doing.
"Very rarely do cops give you handshakes,"
Blas said. "That's like the
payday of the year, especially when
you get it from them."
His relationship with the law was not
always that civil, and that fuels his desire
to serve street justice as well, Blas
said. He is an ex-convict who served
a few short stints in prison for petty
crime a drug-related charges. He is also
a recovering drug addict, Blas said.
He hasn't been back to prison in
three years, and he has been drug-free
for the same amount of time. Although
he is still in the process of turning his
life around, Blas said his street side is
where he draws his confi dence from
when confronting one of his targets.
Yet, he is considerate of the fact that
so many people are watching his videos,
so he won't resort to violence and
he tries to fi lter what he says while on
the air, he said.
"This is not something that I just want
people to view for entertainment; it's
Photo by Ryan Kelley/Ridgewood Times
something I want them to view for
knowledge. I want your kids to watch
this," Blas said. "I'm trying to learn how
to keep it as clean as I can and as professional
as I can, while you're standing in
front of a guy two feet away from you
who is willing to have sex with a child."
Blas has now turned his passion into
a full-blown operation. He has enlisted
the help of eight women who serve as
"decoys" that post ads online and communicate
with potential predators.
They use 12 diff erent messaging apps
and have many diff erent strategies to
avoid suspicion.
When someone knowingly states
their sexual intentions or sends explicit
photos to a decoy who has clearly identifi
ed themselves as being a minor, that's
when Blas knows he can attempt the
bust. The predators don't always show
up, and it doesn't always go as expected
when they do, but Blas always makes
his own intentions clear in his videos.
"This is to raise awareness to the parents,"
Blas said. "I want parents to know
and to think that when 20 minutes has
gone by, when a half-hour has gone by
and you haven't looked at your child
and what they're doing online, to take
that one second to look. You never know,
you just might pick up that phone, and
there that guy is."
Tony Blas stands in the street on July 12 near one of the spots where he confronts sexual predators.
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