Former Montana Police Chief Charged With Distributing Child Porn
(The AEGIS Alliance) – A former East Helena, Montana police chief made his preliminary appearance in a federal courtroom on Tuesday over criminal accusations that he used Facebook messenger to distribute child porn.
On Tuesday, authorities apprehended 42-year-old William Daly Harrington. He didn’t give a plea in the course of his hearing in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen L. DeSoto in the city of Missoula, Montana. Harrington has been jailed while he awaits his Wednesday detention hearing. It is anticipated that Harrington will make his plea on June 3.
Harrington’s lawyer, Scott Albers of Helena, wouldn’t make any comments as of Tuesday.
The criminal complaint states that an FBI agent got a tip on Facebook in September of 2020 that a profile that was later identified as belonging to Harrington shared a sexually explicit photo that included a girl that was only about ten years of age.
During the investigation, authorities discovered that Harrington shared many photos of porn with an additional Facebook profile, identified as belonging to Harrington’s girlfriend from between November 2019 and August of 2020. Over a dozen of the photos looked to be pictures of underage children in their early teenage years, court records indicate.
Harrington’s smartphone was searched by authorities who found more explicit photos, according to court documents.
Harrington served the East Helena Police Department for around 12 years and had been promoted to chief in April 2019. He had been put on paid administrative leave in February after the officials with the city found out about a sexual assault accusation against him, the Independent Record reported. Harrington had resigned from the department on March 5.
Kyle James Lee – The AEGIS Alliance – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
