Law&Crime Sidebar - Man Tried to Meet Teen Girl at Donut Shop for Sex: Police

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

An Arizona man allegedly drove two hours to meet a teen girl for sex, but it turned out to be an undercover officer. Justin Taylor Christman faces felony charges of attempted sexual conduct with a minor and aggravated luring of a minor for sexual exploitation. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber delves into the police report, the suspect’s history, and the tactics used in the undercover operation with Sheriff Chris Swanson.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Well, treat you like a combative, but that's how you want to treat it. No, I. No. Okay. SWAT teams in Tucson, Arizona swarmed a suspect that they say had driven two hours to allegedly meet up with a teen girl for sex.

But that teen turned out to be an undercover officer. And the man was taken into custody on sex crime charges. We are getting a closer look at the takedown from body-worn camera video, and we are going to be speaking with a sheriff and predator hunter, Chris Swanson, about the details of this case, and I will tell you it will make your skin crawl. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. 38-year-old Justin Taylor Christman is in a lot of trouble out in Arizona. He is facing felony charges of attempted sexual conduct with a minor and aggravated luring of a minor. for sexual exploitation. This is according to the Pima County court records. Now, we got our hands on the incident report from April 3rd, 2025 when Chrisman was arrested, as well as body cam video of his arrest. We got to talk about it. But I will tell you, this video came to us blurred by Tucson

police, but you can still see and you can still hear what's going on. Police stop, bro, see the dog. Get down, get down, get down, get down. Get on the ground. Put your hands out. So, how do we get here okay and talk about it i want to bring in friend of the show always happy to see him sheriff chris watson from the genesee county uh so good to see you chris uh now just give everybody a 360 here because where are you right now let everybody you have the best views of any guest and the variety of views look where you are well i i tell you jesse my work carries me all over the country and right now i am standing in front of the lincoln memorial a man who stood for emancipation and in slavery that would need to be broken, those chains. And then down

here, the Washington Monument, which is a symbol of this country, and how free we are. So that's why these cases are so important to break those chains of slavery, which we call human trafficking. I love it. I love it. So, yeah, we got you once on a boat. We got you once in a lot of it. Now we got you in the sea. Next time we see, you might be in a Vegas casino floor. I don't know. But it's, we'll see what happens. But okay, now to get serious about this. Okay. This is a really harrowing takedown. And I'm always curious, one of the things that when we talk about it is an arrest like that. What goes into an arrest like that?

What is the feeling like? What are you most concerned about? Because that is a really, really stressful moment. Well, what I find interesting is the dynamic style of arrest. You heard a flashbang. You saw that they were in their tack gear. You saw that they came from multiple angles. That's what's different.

just to, hey, get out of your car we want to talk to. They knew something about this guy's past. They anticipated perhaps something going sideways. That's why they shot that flak bang to kind of disorient him and then attack and make sure that he was down on the ground. Loud verbal commands. This was all done very, very well. There's a raid plan. That's why they knew something. This wasn't going to be just your normal arrest. So let's talk about this case and we will get to that arrest as well and we have more videos. So according to a partially redacted police report, Mr. Christman actually first started communicating with an undercover officer. Yeah, back in September of last year, that undercover officer, or UC, had an account on an unknown app where a user named Justin

liked one of her posts and sent a message. The police report reads, once the suspect and I began texting, I immediately advised I was 14 years old and the conversation soon stopped. On March 19th, 2025, I received a text message from suspect asking redacted, then stated, never mind because he remembered her age. I again reminded that I was 14. But again, according to this report, instead of ending the conversation, the user known as Justin continued messaging. Now, Chris, how common is that? You see this situation where they're alerted to the age on purpose by the undercover officer, and yet the conversation continues. And that's why. you bring up a great point. There are so many different times that this person could have just

stopped communicating. They realize, all right, this person's 14 years old, underage, I need to stop. He re-up the conversation. And then he kept it going for weeks and weeks until he was arrested. That shows premeditation. That shows that the predator prey relationship is real. Is there a specific way to conduct this communication, to conduct this conversation in an undercover operation? So the subject is not alerted to what's going on? Do they, adopt certain language or slang or terms of younger people? I mean, how do you make it real for the suspect? Because if someone says I'm 14 and continues the conversation, you know, I wonder if people are like, this seems awfully suspicious. Why are they telling my age? Why do they

what do you do? What's that? How do these conversations happen? That is an amazing question because none of these cases would be what they are without chatters. They are the key to the investigation. That means you take police officers and detectives who are moms and dads and people who have families and they go into this dark, deep hole, and they communicate with these predators enough that those predators think that's a real 14-year-old. That's how good they have to be. And that means the language. That means the trends that are happening.

And really what's happening not only just in those communications, but also what's happening in social media. Because a lot of these predators will throw out test baits. They'll throw out a question or some kind of an abbreviation. And if you're not up to that, then they're going to call you out. That's how good these chatterers are. And they have to be that good. Otherwise, you're going to lose this case.

By the way, have you added in a situation or seen a situation where the subject, the suspect, says to the undercover officer, are you a cop? What happens then? Yeah. And it's fair to say no. They say that all the time. Are you the police? And then our response is, no, are you the police? And then it goes past, you know, this is no different than working undercover narcotics.

When I was in drugs, you know, we don't tell the person that we're buying or selling, by the way, I'm the police. That's why it's undercover. You know, there's no expectation that we need to disclose who we are in these kind of cases. Supreme Court has upheld that. That's why when they ask, no, are you a cop? And then you just continue on. By the way, you know why we're able to bring you stories like this and stay on top of the stories that we cover? It's not only because of the amazing support that we get from all of you out there, but also from our incredible sponsor, Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm, our sponsor. They're a firm with over 1,000 attorneys. You know why

they're so big? Because they win a lot. They have recovered over $25 billion for more than 500,000 clients. Think about that. In fact, in the past few months, a client in Florida received $12 million after the insurance company offered just $350,000. Out in Pennsylvania, a client was awarded $26 million. That is, 40 times the insurer's $650,000 offer. Another client in Pennsylvania received $29 million after being offered only $500,000. And even if you think that your case isn't worth millions of dollars. Why not just start a claim and fight for what you deserve? Morgan and Morgan makes it so simple. You can start a claim from your phone in just eight clicks. So if you're injured, you can easily start a claim at for the people.com slash LC sidebar by clicking the link

below or scanning the QR code on screen. All right. So the UC says that she and the suspect kept messaging for weeks with him often sending very vulgar messages saying things like he had a daddy daughter kink you know chris can we stop right there this i don't know what you call it kink culture things that might be considered taboo you see it more and more online we do and that's where those dangerous algorithms come through you know social media has algorithms that when there's any kind of a an interest or a fetish they get fed that and it just continues to throw out that dopamine dump and they want to take that fantasy and act it out in real life the concern that i have is the suspect, does he have real kids at home? And if this is our case, we would absolutely interview

all those kids. Many times, Jesse, we have folks that drop off their kids the same age of which they're coming to meet. And that's because they're just trying to change the face and the name. Now, according to this incident report, the suspect texted this UC on March 29th to check Instagram, where he apparently sent a photo, you guessed it, of his genitals. He allegedly sent another photo of his genitals two days later on March 31st. And then two days after that, April 2nd, the suspect called the undercover officer through Instagram showing him performing a sex act on himself. Now, the UC says that Justin introduced the idea of him driving from his home in Mesa to Tucson to have sex with, again, who he thought was a 14-year-old. That's a distance of more than

100 miles from the report, quote, we agreed for him to drive to Tucson on Thursday, April 3, 2025 to pick me up from school around lunchtime. We planned on going to my house where we would engage in the sex acts while my mother was at work. Suspect advised, he would bring condoms. All right, Chris, if this undercover officer, agent were the one to bring up the idea of meeting in person, would that be what a lot of people may consider to be entrapment? If they introduce the idea first, is that not valid? Let's back up because entrapment is a defense that many times has used. Entrapment is putting bait out there specific to catching somebody.

But if you put the bait out there like we do online and they come to you, that's no longer entrapment. Now the conversation goes to, well, what do you want? And now it's undercover. So if somebody says, yeah, I'm looking for some, you know, sex. If that comes from the suspect, then you just continue to walk down that path. There's a lot of defense attorneys that will try to use that as entrapment, but they're already in the cage. They're already communicating. The age is already out there.

These are the elements of the crimes that we have to put out there. So the entrapment defense on this particular case, in my opinion, is not a defense. How quickly does it escalate to meeting? How often does that happen in these operations? Well, it depends on how diabolical these predators are. This many times we've said before is not the first time they got. This is the first time they got caught. And when you look at people that have gone down this trail for a number of weeks, months, years,

they're very comfortable. And you can tell that in the conversation. There's some predators that we arrest within the first four or five minutes of them being on the line and then boom, they're coming right to the location. Others like in this case take weeks and weeks. So it is not uncommon. A lot of it is part of the fantasy. You know, our chatters will chat 100, 150 people a night when they're doing these operations and three people show up. These other ones that, you know, are chatting. Many times, they're just building up that courage or they just want to go down that path but not act out. But it's the ones who actually know what they're doing. They have time to engage, they don't disengage. They set up this event where they're going to pick them up from school. They're going to be there when the parents aren't there. They know what they're going to do. They are so, as again, I go back to that word premeditate, they're so committed that if law enforcement wasn't there, this act would have taken place on a 14-year-old by a grown man. Well, true to his word, Justin Christman, what did he do? He apparently drove from Mesa to Tucson, texted the UC updates all along the way. The UC apparently directed him to the parking lot of Amy's donuts where he eventually parks, gets out of his truck, and that is when the SWAT team

moved in. Police stop, bro, through the door. Get down, get down, get down. Get on the ground. Now. I'm going to get your hands out. Do not move. Okay, so you might be asking why SWAT, right? Was it really that serious? Was it necessary? Well, I will tell you, a supplemental report explains why police did it that way. A member of the department's special response division wrote, quote, Chrisman had dozens of arrests for DV and DOC, meaning domestic violence and disorderly conduct over his lifetime. Social media videos as of 2023 showed him shooting a handgun at a range. SWAT was approved to assist. Now, a second SWAT member wrote in his report, I exited our vehicle and made announcements identifying myself as police and directing Justin not to run and to get down.

Justin stood still and did not comply with my commands as I approached him. Another officer deployed a light and sound distraction device, and Justin began to turn away and move his hands toward his waist area. I pushed Justin in his right shoulder, and he complied with my direction to get on the ground. And the officer noted that he was easily identifiable as a SWAT team member, right? He was wearing his uniform with a ballistics helmet, police patches, all on him. The officer explained his show of force by stating, I pointed my rifle at Justin due to the serious nature of the charges, the fact that there was a historically high level of violence resistance from suspects facing child sex-related charges. And my knowledge that Justin had been armed in the past and demonstrated proficiency with his handguns.

So, Chris, I go to you. It seems like it was necessary here. Absolutely. That's good police work because not only do you want to make an arrest that is safe, but all the people around. They met in a public place. They met in a donor shop where people are not expecting any kind of illegal, let alone dangerous behavior. And if you look in that video, you had canines, you had SWAT members, you had that flashbang I was talking about. All of it is to distract and to make a safe arrest. They did their investigation to find out this guy's got history of domestic violence, disorderly conduct. He was a big dude. You didn't know what he had on him.

That is what you have to do because if things are not planned like that, and they do go sideways. The first question that people are going to ask is, well, why didn't you take better precautions? So it's better to take all the precautions and have a safe arrest than wish you had. and people get injured. That was done right. You know what I thought was interesting is they say when dealing with people who are being arrested for child sexual related charges, there's a history of violent resistance. They've seen it before. I guess it's different if you're trying to arrest somebody for tax evasion or something like that. But I guess the point is, have you seen that?

Is that true? People who are accused of, you know, very serious, very humiliating. the accusation in of itself they may never recover from. Do you see that? Do you see more violent resistance in these kinds of cases? I think it's better said that we see a number of emotional responses from completely passing out, defecating on themselves, stiffening up, resisting, immediate crying, immediate denial, trying to run. There's no other rest that we do that shows this array of emotional response, yes.

By the way, people might be saying, okay, how do you know you have the right guy? Well, according to the incident report, an officer called the cell phone number that was associated with the Justin profile, and Chrisman's black iPhone began to ring. Anyway, so as some SWAT officers were detaining him, others were keeping an eye on the perimeter of the area, making sure that no innocent bystanders end up in the wrong place at the wrong time, right? Take a look. Hi, ma'am, Tucson Police Department. Ma'am, go ahead and come to me. Yeah, it's not for you. I know, but what is he doing?

Doing bad stuff. Bad stuff. All right. You can come to the rear. Trying to harm me. Come around this way. And you can go around the other exit around the front, okay? No, no, you're fine.

You're fine. So officers, they get Chrisman up off the ground, and this is when he says something to them. See what there, bro. No weapons on your right? No guns. Okay. Okay, roll on your stomach. Roll the other side for me.

Here, I'm going to. You're not going to. You're going to. Go to your butt first. All right. You get the keys in here. Yeah. All right, dude, go and go up to your butt.

Hold on, go to your butt first. All right. Now, one, two, three, stand up. You're just shooting out. No. All right. In case you didn't catch that, Chrisman seemingly says,

can you just shoot me now to which the officer replies now. Chris, what do you make of that? That's the lowest you could go and he realized that he if had the opportunity, he would have taken his own life and he realized that all that's flashing before him is going to cost him everything. That's why it's so important that you are doing your show, Jesse, that you're telling people if you're about to act out, get the help. Don't go down this path because everybody gets caught. It's just a matter of time. And I can imagine a prosecutor might use that and say, you know, consciousness of guilt. He knows he was caught.

He knows what he did. He didn't just say, my gosh, you know, you have the wrong guy. What's happening here? That could be a problem. All right. So officers, they search Christman. They make sure that he doesn't have any contraband on him before he goes to jail. And this is when they find a knife in his pocket, but no guns.

Wallet here. A bunch of keys in this pocket here. Okay. Keys here. Wallet here. Hey, they relax, dude. Don't. I'm going to tell you right now.

adult well treat you like a combative that's how you want to retreat it no I okay then I'd be cool so one officer actually finds condoms in Chrisman's vest pocket catalogs them as evidence along with his iPhone I took a photo one they were a bag they were in his vest pocket the right one it's like a like a fighter's vest. Chris, how important is that? It's key. I mean, we take pictures of guys' wedding rings in the cup holder to show the premeditation and the fact that these are acts that they take out at any one of them, put a broken consciousness and thought, what am I doing? He goes either before the arrest or plans for it, brings condoms. It's just part of the whole case. That's why where they

were and who took them and the inventory is so key. This case is done before he even shows up. But This all adds to, you know, a complete investigation with a plea deal at the end. Now, Chris, I feel bad. I know you're holding the phone, but I only have a few more questions for it as we continue this. So Chris Min, going back to him, he has a request as he's loaded into the patrol car. Let's take a look. So in the back. I'll call my dad real quick.

You what? I call my dad. No calls right now, bro. Yeah, like this white. Do you need those glasses or the sunglasses? No, they're just. all right, cool. All right, so he wants to call his dad. And then another part of the response team checks out Chrisman's truck, but they can't get inside. Let's go check the car.

Stay inside, please. Yes. Thank you. Clear. Nothing. Locked. Yeah. Quiet. Clear. Clear. All right. Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. part locked though so chrisman is taken to the police station and this is when he's interviewed by two female detectives and this is when he invokes his right not to speak with them without a lawyer present but i will tell you there is some back and forth about how exactly he's going to get in touch with that lawyer christman also has another request so he wants to be able

to contact his dad but he doesn't want him to know where he is or what he's been accused of doing All right. Do you have any questions right now for us? No, I just want to know if I can use my phone to get a hold of him or how I need to do that. Well, you can not use your phone, though. Okay, his phone number's in there, so I need to call him. Okay. And I didn't know if I could call my dad or anything like that. Not at this time.

Is there something that we can relate to your dad for you? I just want to let him know what's going on. I'm going to kind of get worried, so I'd like to talk to my attorney to see. okay well you're not going to be able to use your phone okay so that's not an option but if there's someone that we need to call for you we'd be happy to do that okay um I just don't want my dad to know why I'm here that's I just want to let him know that I'm that I'm here but um well we can't give him any information so if you want us to call him and let him know that you're safe and you're not coming back quite yet like I

don't know when it's going to be but you are going to jail today so do you know long I'll be there? Well arraignments at 8 o'clock tonight. Okay. So at least until then. Okay. Initial appearance. Do you know what happens to my truck and stuff? It's there. It's secured on scene. Okay. Do you also tell your dad that it's there? Does he have keys to it? No, he's not here. He's in Washington State. Oh, okay. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, you might as well. And, I mean, he doesn't know I'm in Tucson. He thinks he thinks I'm in Mesa, so I don't know if you can tell him that I'm in Mesa or whatever, but I don't know.

I just want to talk to my attorney, too, so I don't know how I get all of them or what the process is with that. Okay. You can contact your attorney from jail and let them. I don't know his number, though. So that's how I don't know how I can get out. You're going to have to Google it or something because we can not give you access to. how can i google it as a um jail well what's his name all right chris what's your reaction to all that first of all i had to tow the truck and uh you can't leave it on scene that truck if he doesn't give

a consent you'd have a search warrant to go from front to back go inside make sure there's nothing there so i was a little surprised that they said it's still on scene and something could pick it up that truck should have been hooked and uh searched number two reality just set into this guy he just realized i need to call my family now this the guy don't forget that has been abusive towards either or kids or something in domestic. He was playing the bully then, got away from it because it wasn't as serious as this. There's the guy who's got multiple disorders. So he was probably a jerk out in public, and enough so that people call the police.

So this guy's had history of it until today. Now we realize that the gig is up. He needs to come to reality, but he doesn't quite get to the point where he wants to tell everybody why he's there. His humiliation is great, but he's not at the tipping point. But every second that goes by, he realizes that his life is over. And an interesting aside, when investigators took his phone into evidence, they did a full download of everything on it, and they were able to confirm that the phone was owned or primarily used by him. But you know how? Because based on, this is what it says in the report, numerous selfie style photos, both clothed and nude, were on there, revealing a distinct goat tattoo.

You know, I have no analysis for the goat tattoo. What I can say is it's going to be hard to say that's not his phone. Yeah. And you know what? All of those are what we call pieces of the evidence trail. It all is exculpatory for both sides. There's no getting out of this. You know, you want to make sure that the chat is the guy that you're chatting with, that the guy you arrest is the guy who started. And all of those pieces are key. And that's why every little bit of counts. A defense attorney is trying to poke holes in that to see if there's a break. But not in this case. You got the chat log. You got his phone. You got this IP address. You got the billing information. You got the photos on the phone. he's locked in. And before I let you go, Chris, I wanted to ask you what you think might be happening behind the scenes, because according to the insert report, investigators, are they also found chats on the app telegram that allegedly revealed Chrisman had been paying for child sexual abuse material as well as bestiality videos. He himself was indicted.

He was released on bond. He's had a few minor court hearings since then. But the last couple have been continued, according to the Pima County Court records. He's supposed to make his next appearance later in October. What is happening right now from an investigation? point of view. It's not uncommon that when we take those phones, that's why those detectives said there's no using your phone. You're not going to turn it on. You're not going to search anything because from the time it's in custody to the time it's downloaded, there has to be a complete

chain of evidence. So there's no indication that law enforcement did anything. The phone added anything. So that's why they said there's no touching it. That forensic download is really just a mirror. It takes the phone. It makes a mirror image. And then we go through it. On that phone is what you just talked about. There's probably plenty of images of underage pornography, plenty of images that are now going to be added charges to this case. So he just continues to go down a deep hole. It depends also. Is he sending those child porn images? Is he accepting them? Is he sharing them? Is he creating them? There's a lot in this case. And that's why would we do these proactive cases are so critical because it would have been a 14-year-old child. And if police weren't there,

that child would have been sexually assaulted. And then those child porn images would have continued to go. So this is why these cases all over the country are so, so important. My hats off to Tucson PD. They did a great job. Chris Swanson, thank you so much for coming on. It was great seeing you. And the best part about this is you got a great arm workout in the middle. I mean, yeah, right on from arm to arm. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of your chip.

It was really appreciate you taking the time. Appreciate you. Be saying for everybody. And that is all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Everybody, thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcast, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can follow me on X or Instagram. I'm Jesse Weber.

I'll see you next time. You can binge all episodes of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.