One police officer here has been arrested for possessing a computer disk holding images of children in sex acts with adults - and the officer who found the disk has been suspended.
Patrolman Charles Veal was arrested Feb. 1 and charged with four counts of possessing child porn, which means a maximum five years behind bars if he's convicted. But Corporal Mary Webb was suspended, APBNews says, after she found the disk but failed to report it to superiors.
Prosecutors determined that of twelve images on the disk, four could be called porn but the others - mostly just children posing nude - could be called erotica, which is not illegal, APBNews says. But they also suggested Veal was most likely to receive probation time if convicted, since he has no prior criminal record.
Veal is free on $2,000 bail pending a Feb. 18 arraignment in Citrus County Court. Webb was suspended for three days and demoted. Crystal River Police Chief James Farley tells APBNews he started investigating the case last month after the disk was found in Veal's patrol car.
Webb was on the next shift, APBNews says, and found the disk in the car and put it in her locker. Veal went to Farley to tell him about the disk after discovering the disk was gone. Webb told investigators she was trying to keep Veal from being fired, APBNews says.
There's no evidence Veal planned selling the images, according to Farley. No other porn was found on any other department laptops, APBNews says, and no other officers seem to have been involved.
This isn't Veal's first brush with trouble on the job. He had been a police sergeant when forced to resign in 1994 over an incident involving nude photos of himself found by the police chief at the time, APBNews says, but a new chief rehired him a year later.
