Former Exeter Police Officer Leonard Galli was busted due to an online predator sting setup by a civilian known as the Luzerne County Predator Catcher. The Luzerne County Predator Catcher met Galli on the popular gay hookup app Grindr while pretending to be a 15 year old boy. Galli told him that he was a 39 year old man named Paul and that he wanted to meet him. The Luzerne County Predator Catcher then went to a gas station and met a man that said his name was Paul, but turned out to be former Exeter Police Officer Leonard Galli. The Luzerne County Predator Catcher uploaded the video to social media and it went viral. We embedded the YouTube version on this page below the body of this article. In the video Officer Galli says he was at the gas station to meet some friends, but then changes his tune, said his name was not Paul, and drove away. He is now behind bars at the Luzerne County Jail on charges of corrupting minors, sexual abuse of a minor and statutory sexual assault of someone over the age of 11.
Officers later told the media that phone company records linked the IP address used by the owner of the email address used to create the Grindr account to Galli. Media interviews with members of the community indicated that Galli was well known and there were rumors of Galli being involved in weird and perverted things for years. Galli had been an officer with the Exeter Police Department for many years. After his retirement he launched a business called Galli's Fighting Chance School of Self Defense located at 504 Roosevelt Street in Exeter, Pennsylvania. The business appears to have offered self defense classes that we believe were taught by Galli. We are not sure how many students he had, how old his students were, or if he engaged in any type of sexual misconduct with his students. With shows like Cobra Kai making self defense classes more popular among children and teenagers we fear that this case is probably just the tip if iceberg. Most pedophiles spend years abusing people before the are caught. Those that are in positions of authority and trust in the community typically are better at getting away with it than most.
According to public records Leonard Paul Galli is 53 years old and his last known home address was 114 Jean Street in Exeter, Pennsylvania. We are exempting Galli from our usual courtesy of censoring home addresses of law enforcement officers due to the nature of the charges against him. We typically do that whenever an officer is charged with a sex crime because we want to warn his neighbors that there is a predator in the area. Please do not use this information to engage in any criminal activity against that property or people there.
A background check of Galli revealed that he was charged with two misdemeanors for assault and battery in 1988 in Worchester County, Maryland (case number 00605396I1). Those charges were dropped.