AURORA, Colo. (KDVR)
More than 3 years after law enforcement was tipped off to child internet sex crimes, a retired Cherry Hills Village Police officer has entered a not guilty plea.
Jerry Stinnett appeared at his arraignment via WebEx Friday afternoon on charges of Sexual Exploitation of a Child/Video and Sexual Exploitation of Child Porn Materials.
The 65-year old was charged back in March of 2022 but his arraignment had been delayed 6 times and today he asked for yet a 7th continuance.
Arapahoe County Judge Joseph Whitfield denied the request and set a trial date for the week of March 25, 2024.
The internet service provider Yahoo first tipped of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in July of 2020 that a user had “Uploaded and shared images, that they considered to be Child Sex Abuse Materials (CSAM), onto their servers” according to an arrest affidavit obtained by the Problem Solvers.
The NCMEC then conducted a geo-location search on the IP address and determined it was mostly likely assigned to Comcast in the Denver-Metro area.
At that point, the Cyber Tip was forwarded to the Colorado Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force (ICAC).
The ICAC sent a subpoena to Comcast on October 14, 2022 and the following day Comcast said the subscriber’s IP address belonged to Jerry Stinnett in Aurora.
On November 10, 2020, the case was assigned to an Aurora Police Detective who’s a member of the ICAC task force.
YAHOO had provided 7 images and 3 videos of females under the age of 18, either nude or engaged in sex acts.
In January, detectives learned that Stinnett and his wife spend their winters in Florida and their summers in Colorado.
Investigators waited for the couple to return to Colorado and then on June 29, 2021 a SWAT team executed a search warrant while the couple was home and seized a computer desk top, 3 lab tops, 3 computers tablets and 4 cell phones.
According to the affidavit, detectives found “27 image files and 9 videos that depicted underage females either nude and/or engaged in sex acts.”
Aurora Police Detective Patrick McGinty described Stinnett as very talkative during the search warrant and wrote that Stinnett mentioned only he had access to all the files associated with the child porn and that he chats online with people “who enjoy role play” and chatted with people who “Are 25 and pretend to be 15.”
He also told police he “never intentionally search for or downloaded child porn” and he “hoped” police would not find any child porn on his devices.
Once the search warrant was over Stinnett, “spontaneously stated that he got in trouble for regular porn when he worked at Frisco PD. He explained that he was on his work computer and an ad for a pornographic website popped up. STINNETT advised that the pop-up ad generated an alert to the city’s IT and he got a call from a supervisor about it. He stated that once he explained everything, nothing further happened.”
The Problem Solvers reached out to Frisco Police and a spokeswoman told FOX31 Stinnett was never investigated for misconduct during his tenure with Frisco PD.
In August of 2021, Detectives were able to extract a huge volume of evidence from Stinnett’s devices. Eventually detectives allegedly recovered 9 videos and 27 images of child porn from Stinnett’s devices, leading a judge to sign an arrest warrant in February of 2022.
Arapahoe County Prosecutors charged him in March of 2022 but since that his arraignment has been delayed 6 times.
Now 18-months later, Stinnett has finally entered a not-guilty plea.
His next court appearance for a status conference is scheduled for November 27, 2023.
Stinnett was first hired by Frederick Police in January of 1993 and resigned in May of 1996.
He then went to work for Frisco Police from June of 1996 to January of 2007.
In February of 2007, he began employment with Cherry Hills Village Police Department until he resigned in August of 2013.
