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Watch A Former Sheriff's Deputy Get Arrested In A Child Porn Raid
Authorities arrested an ex-L.A. County Sheriff's Dept. deputy at his home in Santa Fe Springs on Wednesday after a 4-month-long investigation into his distribution of child pornography over the internet.
Detectives from the Los Angeles Police Department Juvenile Division Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) said in a statement that they had been investigating Lorne Reed, 32, since April 2014 after they had been looking into file sharing websites and found that child porn was being downloaded from Reed's home.
When ICAC, along with Homeland Security, Whittier Police Department, Children Protective Services and Animal Control went to Reed's residence, they found him home alone with his two children. The kids have since been taken into protective custody by Department of Children and Family Services.
KTTV was on site during the early 6 a.m. arrest and videotaped the entire incident (which can be seen below), and reported that ICAC had taken Reed's laptop, cell phone and storage media under their search warrant to investigate. At the LAPD's mobile forensic lab, they found on his computer numerous sexual images and videos of girls between the ages of five to 10, and of men sexually abusing them.
"It's very disturbing," said investigator Shanon Gaeney. "People often think of child pornography as pictures of young girls on beaches in bikinis. This is not it. It is the photographic and video evidence of child rape."
An L.A. County Sheriff's Dept. spokesperson told the LA. Times that Reed resigned from his post in February 2013, but didn't offer any other details about it.
Reed is being held at the Metropolitan Jail Division with a bail set at $20,000. He will be arraigned in court on Friday.
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