This fucking lowlife swine was accessing this shit while he was on duty. You know, the people you'd call if you thought a child was in any kind of danger. Lock him up and put him in with the general population. Let the convicts themselves sort him out.
Former Calgary police Const. Thomas Buttle will undergo a psychiatric risk assessment before his sentencing hearing on accessing child pornography.
Buttle pleaded guilty Tuesday to that charge in connection with a police raid in March at his Calgary home.
Defence counsel Alain Hepner entered the plea on his client’s behalf and asked provincial court Judge Frank Maloney to order a risk assessment through the Forensic Assessment Outpatient Service.
Crown prosecutor Jenny Rees, appearing on behalf of Edmonton counsel Keith Nicholls, said a sentencing hearing will take place in May.
According to a statement of agreed facts made an exhibit, Buttle was arrested March 8 following the search of his residence.
A search warrant was obtained by the Southern Alberta Internet Child Exploitation Unit after an internet sharing site in January reported to the United States National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children that seven images of child pornography had been uploaded by a user in Alberta.
A production order determined the Internet Protocol address associated to the upload was Buttle’s residence, the statement said.
“Several devices were seized from the residence,” the court document said, noting Buttle was arrested at a different location and a cellphone was seized from him at the time.
All the devices were examined by an expert.
“Child pornography was found on four different devices belonging to the accused,” it said.
“Two images of child pornography were found on a laptop computer seized from the residence.”
Both images were the same and appeared to have been deleted.
“A cellular telephone seized from the residence had 127 images of child pornography. The cellular was not operational at the time of the search of the residence.
“The images appear to have been deleted at some point and were not available to the user.”
Police also inspected a computer tower where more than 4,000 images of illicit material was discovered.
“Again, all of these images had been deleted by the time of the search,” the exhibit said.
The cellphone seized from Buttle at the time of his arrest contained 53 more images, but those, too, had been deleted.
Outside court, Rees said sometimes people who access child pornography on their electronic devices delete them immediately afterward.
Buttle was placed on administrative leave after his arrest and later resigned his position with the Calgary Police Service.
Buttle remains at liberty pending sentencing, but faces a minimum jail term of at least six months.
KMartin@postmedia.com
On Twitter: @KMartinCourts
