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COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. -- Colorado Springs police are cracking down on child pornography as part of a nationwide effort for Internet Safety Month.

So far, they have arrested 15 men in Colorado Springs who had and shared child pornography.

The men range in age from 18 to 70 years old. Four are active duty Army and Air Force personnel stationed in the Springs.

Police say the arrests are not part of a pornography ring but all of the men were using filing sharing programs on the Internet.

In the process of this investigation police discovered there may actually be local victims in the Springs.

How those pictures got on the Internet may have started rather innocently through something called "sexting."

Sexting is when teens take nude pictures of themselves and send them to another teen. In this case, it appears those pictures got in the wrong hands and were distributed on the Internet.

Many adults haven't heard of this growing problem.

In fact, 39 percent of teens admit to sending at least semi-nude pictures to someone they know, in most cases a boyfriend or girlfriend.

"It's a really scary thing," said Carole Falconer.

"Parents need to be watchful -- they need to have more control," said Sabrina Johnson.

"When you are in high school kids get away with everything so if they are doing stupid stuff that's normal," said Nathan Jones.

Normal maybe, but Springs police say the larger problem is those private pictures are becoming public eye candy on the Internet.

"It may be traded hundreds of thousandsof times in a short amount of time and we see images like that, unfortunately, on a regular basis," said Sgt. Bill Dehart with the Colorado Springs Police Department (CSPD).

Viewing nude pictures of teens and children is a felony for adults. It is also a felony for the teen who takes or shares the picture.

"I don't think there should be jail time (for teens) but the consequence should be there," Johnson said.

"I think education is very important," said Ray Foster.

"I think there's some younger ones who may not understand the repercussions, and don't realize years later this could come back to haunt them," Falconer said.

"I don't believe anyone has a good grasp on it nationwide," Dehart said.

Police are still investigating the sexting images. They haven't arrested any juveniles and say they don't plan to. However, police do plan to arrest more adults for child pornography in the coming days.

CSPD teamed up with 15 different law enforcement agencies in the process of investigating these men.

They say the child pornography crack-down will continue throughout the summer.