Bridgeport Man Arrested On Risk of Injury Charge

Following an investigation, police have arrested a Bridgeport man, alleging that he used a computer in seeking to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity.

Police said they arrested Michael Gutman, 43, of Bridgeport on the afternoon of April 20, charging him with criminal attempt to commit risk of injury or impair the morals of a minor, and also with using a computer to entice a minor to engage in sexual activity.

“This investigation involved communications through the use of computers,” police said in a statement. Police said Gutman posted $50,000 bail and was released for a May 4 appearance in Danbury Superior Court. There was no warrant in the arrest against Gutman, police said.

Gutman’s arrest is the ninth such arrest that police have made in a continuing series of separate investigations into alleged Internet predators since last August.

In those arrests, police have posed as a nonexistent underage person on the Internet with whom the later-arrested men unknowingly interacted in setting up a meeting with the nonexistent minor. Since last August, police also have arrested men from Naugatuck, Bethel, Stratford, Cromwell, Weston, Southbury, Woodbury, Bloomfield.

Police Chief Michael Kehoe has acknowledged that there have been no actual underage persons as victims of the alleged Internet predators, but only a police officer or officers who have been posing as such underage persons on the Internet in seeking to make arrests.

Police have sought to arrest Internet predators to prevent them from potentially coming into physical contact with actual underage victims, the police chief has said.