Officer Sean Harrington has been charged with stealing and distributing private images from the phones of women he had arrested.
A now former California Highway Patrol Officer was charged with two felonies last Friday. His crime? Stealing and then distributing nude images that he lifted off the phones of female suspects.
He got caught when shortly after being pulled over for a DUI last August, the first victim noticed from her iPad, thanks to Apple’s iCloud service, that someone had sent nude images of her from her phone to another phone. After investigating the phone that received the nude pics was that of Officer Sean Harrington of the California Highway Patrol in Dublin, Calif., who in turn passed the photos around to his fellow Officers of the law.
Via The San Jose Mercury News:
MARTINEZ — A Dublin-based CHP officer has resigned from the agency and was charged Friday with two felonies for allegedly secretly forwarding himself explicit photos from female arrestees’ phones and then sharing the images with colleagues.
Officer Sean Harrington, 35, of Martinez, faces up to three years and eight months in prison under the two counts of computer theft filed against him Friday afternoon in Contra Costa County Superior Court. Harrington submitted his resignation to the CHP on Wednesday, according to a statement released by his attorney Friday afternoon.
Contra Costa deputy district attorney Barry Grove said his office is declining to file charges at this time against CHP Officers Robert Hazelwood and Dion Simmons who, according to court documents, each received stolen photos from Harrington.
Grove called the conversation between the officers about the women and their stolen photos in text messages “unethical, unappealling, and maybe immoral,” but not in violation of the penal code.
In a statement from his attorney, Michael Rains, Harrington offered “his deepest apologies to the women whose cellular telephones were accessed or reviewed,” and apologized to law enforcement colleagues, saying he was ” embarrassed to have tarnished the reputation of the California Highway Patrol and law enforcement generally.”
An attorney for two of the women arrested welcomed the charges. Read More…
To “protect and serve.”
I love ironic mugshots.
