This is going to blow up, no matter what side of the political side you fall on.
From the LVRJ:
Former Chief Joseph Chronister, who retired Thursday, said that while one of his detectives investigated, he now wishes his department had done a more and had sought help from an outside agency.
North Las Vegas Police got the case after the mayor asked the department for help removing what he believed to be child pornography from his personal iPad. A detective helped out, but didn’t check any of the mayor’s other electronic devices or press Lee on why his story didn’t make sense in light of evidence found, a police report filed last year shows.
Asked if anyone else would have been treated the same way, the chief said the short answer is no.
“We’re talking about the mayor of North Las Vegas,” Chronister said. “He is a person of authority. He is a person of power. He absolutely has the ability to control certain aspects of our department.”
That includes who the chief of police is. Chronister said that Lee, who took office in July 2013, told him last December that he had to leave the department by June.
A North Las Vegas police officer since 1989, Chronister said he and Lee have clashing personalities, and that Lee wants “bobbleheads” in government who never disagree.
Reached for comment Thursday, Lee said he wasn’t investigated for possession of child pornography — he was a victim. He said he contacted police because he was worried children were being harmed and he felt he should give them his iPad in case it could stop a bad guy.
But Lee’s version of the events doesn’t match the police report or Chronister’s account of what happened.
PORNOGRAPHY FOUND
According to a report filed by Detective Mark Hoyt, another officer was at City Hall when the mayor approached him on Oct. 9, 2014.
Chronister said he was told that Lee “grabbed” the officer and said “he had an issue with kiddie porn popping up on his computer.”
A few days later, a detective who handles these types of cases called Lee. According to his report, Lee told him that someone sent him an email and that several images he thought were child pornography popped up and he wanted them gone.
The detective told the mayor if he found illegal content he could take legal action and would notify the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, according to the report. The mayor told him to go ahead and pick up his iPad.
The investigation lasted just one day, Oct. 20, 2014.
In his report, the detective said he found no emails having to do with pornography of any kind, but did find links to three pornographic websites in the iPad’s browser history. Two of the sites were not illegal, the detective determined, but the third showed pornography organized by the country where the images originated. He said the site looked illegal.
“I did locate several possible photos that could be considered child pornography but since they were in a different country, I could not verify the age of the people pictured,” the detective wrote.
That sentence confused Joseph Dooley, a retired FBI agent who previously ran Connecticut’s computer crimes task force. The Review-Journal contacted Dooley for his take as an expert in the field.
“If he thinks it’s child porn, it’s child porn. It doesn’t matter what country it’s in,” Dooley said. “That sentence makes no sense to me.”
He also questioned why the department waited so long to seize the iPad after the mayor told them it might have illegal content. It’s not unusual to wait to investigate a device, but it’s not proper to delay seizing it, he said.
“If you suspect you have child porn on the device that’s like having a kilo of cocaine sitting on your coffee table,” he said.
Hoyt declined comment on the case, but in his report he said he plugged the iPad into an FBI-owned computer that downloads everything but could not find the email Lee described.
Chronister said his understanding, based on conversations with the detective, is that the mayor’s explanation about pornography associated with an email couldn’t have happened as the mayor described. http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/police-chief-north-las-vegas-mayor-got-special-treatment-child-porn-investigation
I have 2 views on this.
From the Mayor's standpoint: The mayor, it appears, was the one who contacted the cops and wanted his personal iPad cleared by the cops. If he was guilty of viewing child porn, why would he do this?
And I am sure, it is possible, someone who hates the mayor, might have planted a virus on his iPad for some kind of revenge.
On the other hand, I have never had had a child porn e-mail or virus planted on my private e-mail. And if it did happen, I would be to the cops trying to exonerate myself and demanding an investigation.
Either way, this seems to be a scandal that will not go away any time soon. I am sure there will be some kind of state or Federal investigation that will now happen, if it isn't going on right now,
Overpopulated
1 hour ago
No comments:
Post a Comment