VCU police chief faces sex charges
Willie B. Fuller
Published: January 30, 2009
VIDEO: VCU announces arrest of police chief
Virginia Commonwealth University Police Chief Willie B. Fuller used the screen name "Hotcop2006" when, authorities say, he used a home computer to sexually solicit a chat room contact he believed was a 14-year-old girl.
Fuller, 50, was arrested Wednesday night at his Henrico County apartment and charged with two counts each of using a computer to solicit sex from a minor and attempted indecent liberties with a juvenile, both felonies.
After learning yesterday of his arrest, VCU officials immediately suspended Fuller without pay.
Authorities say Fuller fell for what has become a fairly routine investigative technique for catching online sexual predators. Posing as minors, investigators will troll popular Internet chat rooms and create fictitious posts with the aim of finding and arresting people seeking sexual encounters with children.
Fuller is accused of using a computer at his home in the 9000 block of Meadowfield Court to sexually solicit a 14-year-old girl Jan. 10. Authorities say he portrayed himself as being in his mid-30s.
In Fuller's case, the "girl" was actually Chesterfield County police Detective Keith Vincent, a veteran computer crimes investigator.
"There was one day of chatting," Chesterfield prosecutor David Rigler said after Fuller made a brief video appearance yesterday in Chesterfield Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court, via closed-circuit television from the county jail. "Everything he's charged with happened on that one day."
Details of those online conversations probably won't be made public until Fuller's preliminary hearing April 2.
In many cases, meetings will be arranged between the detectives posing as minors and the people with whom they communicate. But no such meeting occurred with Fuller, Rigler said.
Fuller, dressed in a red jail jumpsuit, appeared distressed yesterday but managed a few fleeting smiles as his image flashed on a wide-screen television monitor during his video arraignment.
He told Judge Edward A. Robbins Jr. that he planned to retain defense lawyer Arnold Henderson to represent him.
Investigators seized two desktop computers, one laptop computer, a cable modem, two thumbdrives and other equipment from his apartment Wednesday evening when he was arrested, according to a search warrant filed in Henrico Circuit Court.
The affidavit for that warrant, which usually provides details of the investigation, has been sealed by the court.
Chesterfield police in recent years have stepped up efforts to investigate sex crimes of all types on the Internet.
In 2007, a two-month Internet sting netted the arrests of nine men who were charged with soliciting sex from a minor. Some of the men sought sex from young boys, others from young girls. Seven of the nine suspects arranged meetings with their contacts but were greeted instead by detectives.
All nine were convicted.
This month, county police arrested seven other men who took the bait in a one-day Internet sting operation targeting online prostitution.
"When time permits, our detectives trained in this area will utilize their time and go online," said Chesterfield police Maj. Dan Kelly.
Fuller, who is single, has accounts on MySpace and Facebook, two of the Internet's most popular social-networking Web sites.
On his MySpace page, he posted a cryptic message Saturday that appears to foreshadow his current troubles: "Life is a series of ups and downs. I have been blessed my entire life, but the last month has been a series of letdowns by people I thought were important to me."
Fuller came to VCU as police chief in 2000 from Virginia State University, where he was also police chief, said John M. Bennett, senior vice president for finance and administration.
Bennett said VCU instituted criminal background checks on all employees at some point after Fuller was hired, but he said he knew of no complaints against Fuller.
He also said he did not know whether Chesterfield police had taken any VCU computer equipment from Fuller's home.
"We regard this situation as extremely serious," he said. "VCU has taken aggressive action to address it and we will fully cooperate with the Chesterfield County police investigation."
Bennett said VCU did not plan its own probe.
Chesterfield Police Chief Thierry Dupuis notified VCU officials yesterday morning of Fuller's arrest, Bennett said. The board of visitors was notified, and about 30 minutes later VCU President Eugene P. Trani alerted the university community by e-mail.
VCU officials appointed police Capt. Carlton Edwards as interim chief. Bennett said Edwards has been with VCU for 24 years and was the most senior captain on the force, which has 82 officers.
Bennett said he met with the officers this morning and "they are stunned and shocked, as we all are."
But he said there will be an orderly transfer of power. Edwards previously filled in as chief when Fuller was on medical leave.
Fuller was an art student at VCU in the 1970s and worked as a student security officer. In a 2003 interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, he said it was from that experience that he learned he liked police work.
Fuller isn't the only local police chief to be nabbed in a sex sting. In 1995, Virginia Union University Police Chief Eugene Douglas Wells Jr. was arrested and later convicted of soliciting a prostitute in Richmond in a city sting operation that netted almost 30 arrests.
Police said Wells solicited the services of an undercover female police officer posing as a prostitute at West Broad and Ryland streets.
Contact Mark Bowes at (804)649-6450 or
.
Contact Karin Kapsidelis at (804) 649-6119 or .
Staff writer Bill McKelway contributed to this report.
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Reader Reactions
bobit, I agree, too much big brother watching us. I agree, and I will go you one further. If a parent or guardian leaves pornographic magazines laying on the coffee table, or porno movies in the DVD, or posters of adults having sex on the wall, isn’t this contributing to the delinquency of a minor? If this is true, then why is leaving a home computer without parental controls turned on a crime? Leaving an unlocked loaded gun laying around is a crime, why not the internet? Bottom line is that a computer is not a toy or a baby sitter for children, if parents/guardians would take the responsibility they chose to have, these computer crimes could not take place. If this man did what he is accused of doing, then I consider him a disgusting PIG, but bottom line is parents should be watching their kids and not expecting the rest of us to do it for them.
I’d join the chorus of ‘Lock-up Willie & throw away the key’ IF I knew he were actually trying to pick up an ACTUAL 14 yr old girl. But he was chatting with an adult police officer it seems. So the law is just guessing his actual intent and that is all. (Yeah, I know…this is the law bobit & if you don’t agree then call the legislator…)
A lot of these ‘stings’ are wrongheaded & dirty though. A couple years ago, somewhere here in VA, an alleged drug dealer was snared in one of these stings. But he didn’t sell the cop drugs. It was phony stuff, baby powder or some bogus substance. But they still nailed him—for FRAUD. And I believe grand larceny too because he accepted the money! He was put away because he DIDN’T sell them real drugs!!!
I’m not speaking up for Willie Fuller. What I’m doing is speaking out that we’ve gotten way too carried away with these ‘stings’. Any one of us can get arrested because someone thought that we thought -something- that someone else thought was dangerous.
Welshwoman, I understand and can respect what you are saying, and I certainly would not want the job of a police officer, but those of us that choose to be public servants are held to higher standards because it is the right of the tax payer to be informed of what their taxes are paying for, and to be able to express opinion, and when necessary, disapproval. Police Officers and other public officials serve the public because they choose to, and in doing so, their privacy is limited. Police are supposed to be the “good guys” and when we see them break a law it reduces our faith in the system and sends the wrong message to our youth who are taught at a young age, to look up to them.
Adult chat rooms and x-rated websites are not intended for juveniles, and there are safeguards readily available for parents or guardians to execute that would prevent or limit, the sites their juveniles visit, if they do not implement these safeguards, they too must share the blame, but that does not give the right for an adult to take advantage of the child’s situation.
There are scientists that do study the minds of the sexually deviant, and maybe some day there will be a cure for them, but for now, all society can do is lock them up when they are discovered. Hopefully the investigators will find that there was some kind of a misunderstanding in this case, and that it was not as it seems. Job stress can be to blame for many physical and psychological characteristics of an employee, but I believe sexual deviance is something someone is borne with, or is conditioned to as a child, and cannot be blamed on the side effects of being a cop .
I make absolutely no excuses for Willie and if he is guilty he will have to do the time. But I would really like to see this society look for the root causes of these issues to address them rather than just be a bunch of judgemental jerks. Don’t you want to know what made Jeffrey Dahmer like he was so we can prevent it in the future for God’s sake? Why are 14 year old girls out there taunting guys like this and a huge number of them are! I worked in law enforcement, these guys and gals are not saints but look at what they have to cope with every day! It’s enough to tip you over the edge. Don’t believe it? Go out and do the job instead of criticizing all the time - they don’t get paid beans for what they put up with and they get no support from their own administrations or from the public. Criticism is all anyone offers! And having known this guy I’m just telling you straight up, he isn’t a saint but he wasn’t always like this. And some of the folks who have worked for him weren’t the easiest either. Like it or not, fire, police and rescue are having a terrible time finding qualified people who can pass the backgrounds. They’ve had to lower the standards and if you think Willie is scary you had better get a grip because the youngsters out there now are often clueless and could care less whether you get help or not. And according to the law, they don’t have to care or send you help! There’s plenty of work to do, pitch in instead of just pointing fingers all the time.
I sure would like to know why I can’t see Capt. Edward L. Hope’s booking picture, but I have seen 3 days worth of pictures of Willie Fuller? One was a Chief of a COLLEGE police dept., the other is a 30 year Captain of the VIRGINIA STATE POLICE!
One was accused of SOLICITING, the other FORCIBLY SODOMIZED a young girl, yet one we haven’t heard about in 4 days, the other I have heard about and SEEN every day since it happened.
There is no point or TRUTH in sting operations and they should be illegal! I prefer an America that demands TRUTH with JUSTICE. Sting operations are against the law of God -ROMANS 14:13
Let us not therefore judge one another any more; but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.
I could see giving a warning to someone in a sting operation but arresting them is a lie. They cannot face their accuser as stipulated in the Bill of Rights because their accuser is an adult old enough to have a sexual conversation with another adult. They also have the tools of seduction to entrap these individuals.
Are there any REAL crimes in America these days?
And don’t you have to be 18 to log into Yahoo Messenger?
Ahh yes dustoff, I stand corrected, in the very first paragraph it does say he used a home computer. With all of the media these kinds of cases have received over the years, one would think everyone would know they are not invisible in chat rooms, what bothers me is the fact he used Hotcop in his screen name almost as if advertising he is a cop and above the law. Hopefully it is all a mistake or misunderstanding, but at the absolute least, this publicity shall serve as a reminder to people that if they do this kind of thing, they will likely be caught.
Loyd, the report says he was accused of using his home computer and VCU did plan their own probe. And, if VCU did a random search of inappropriate internet usage, I’m sure many more people would be let go - not for soliciting sex to anyone, but for use on myspace and facebook and personal businesses. We’re talking about government employees here - don’t you remember the report on the inappropriate internet usage by City Hall employees?
Even though he was employeed by VCU as the Chief of Police, please do not let what he has done in his personal time reflect upon the other VCU Police Officers or any other employees for that matter. They certainly were not involved, nor did they even know.
Police will not take action in a case such as this without almost airtight evidence. There can be no ambiguity at all, or they will not make themselves known to the predator and will continue to investigate him. So, to flesh this out a bit…that means that Fuller did not write “lets party sometime” or type “can I come over and hang out?“ And he couldn’t have not known the age of the person with whom he was conversating. These two points are the key elements to the crime, the third is the electronic device used. So, in order for the police to feel so strongly about going to the home of a fellow law-enforcement officer and the chief of another agency in order to put him in handcuffs they would have to have all of these elements satisfied beyond reproach. This means that Fuller specifically typed that he wanted to have sex (or something to that effect) with the person he was conversating with and the other person clearly indicated their age. If that had not happened, the police would still be investigating him. What does all that mean? HE DID IT. Get ready for a plea bargain, no way does he ever step foot in court.
My guess would be that VCU conducted a random search of ALL employees computer usesge to determine if employees were spending too much time on the internet for non-work related items. They probably found he was visiting chat rooms that could be considered inappropriate,and reported him to the authorities. At this point it does not matter how they found about him, the important thing is that they did find out about him and are doing something about it rather than sweep it under the rug like VCU would have done. If they employed entrapment techniques, it will be up to the court to make a decision. The courts can only uphold laws that we the people put in place by supporting (voting for) our political representatives. I do feel sory for this mans family and hope they can get through this, and I do not see how VCU or anyone else could have seen this coming.
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