Florida deputy sheriff turns son in for child porn www.privateofficer.com
SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. Feb 29 2012
The son of a Seminole County sheriff’s deputy is facing felony charges for possession of child porn.
Investigators said the deputy’s son was keeping the porn on a cellphone. The deputy took his son’s cellphone away to punish him for something and found a locked file with a suspicious name: “Photos/videos 13-15 years old.”
The arrest report shows that 18-year-old Trevor Lang’s father, Dana, a Seminole County sheriff’s deputy, took the phone right to his department’s investigators to find out if the file held what it appeared to hold: Child porn.
Sheriff’s investigators found that it did, and the report shows that the teenager then confessed to downloading, possessing and sharing child pornographic images.
He was arrested on 10 counts, and is in jail on $1,900 bond.
“A deputy is still a deputy, whether he is a father or on duty and right is right and wrong is wrong,” said sheriff’s department spokeswoman Kim Cannady. “He knew what he had to do. It was still wrong, against state law, and he did exactly what he needed to do. As tough as it may be, it needed to be done.”
The deputy’s son was arrested Monday morning, but as of 5 p.m. Tuesday, his mugshot still was not up on the Seminole County jail’s website. It has since been released.
The sheriff’s office runs the jail, but said it was not giving him special treatment because his father is a deputy.
As a deputy’s family member, public records exemptions protect the deputy, such as home address and phone number exemptions. But the sheriff’s office said there was a mix-up at the jail over whether to withhold a relative’s mugshot.
“The mugshot should’ve been available. It was just basically a human error issue that we had. It’s an automatic thing when law enforcement officers are arrested,” Cannady said.
WFTV tried to talk to the Lang family about Trevor’s arrest, but no one was home.
Dana Lang has been with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office since 1997. He started his career at the jail.
We checked his record and found one “Use of Force” case back in 2003. He’s now a patrol deputy in the Winter Park and Oviedo areas.
