London's Southwark Crown Court found the detective, Kevin Dunks, guilty of possessing what is being described as an "appalling" collection of hardcore child porn. Dunks will serve a five-month jail term, according to authorities. He will also be registered as a sex offender for seven years.
The evidence retrieved from the constable's home involved the presence of hundreds of images of "penetrative" sex between children and adults, as well as what authorities described as "geriatric" pornography.
The suspect allegedly indicated little remorse at the time of his sentencing and admitted to possessing only a very small portion of the recovered evidence. The rest, he claimed, had been accidentally downloaded onto his hard drive while he was surfing for adult pornography.
Dunk's claimed that he was part of an aggressive file-sharing network through which he traded adult pornography images. He claims that the network also sent him child porn files that he was not aware of at the time.
The judge, however, did not believe Dunk's defense.
"They are appalling examples of child pornography and clearly reflect the evil exploitation of young children," the judge was quoted as saying.
When addressing Dunk's claim that he acquired child porn accidentally, the judge stated, "You said you were trying to delete these images, but you transferred them to a disc and then stored the disc. It is abundantly clear to me the obvious solution would be to alter your system as soon as you realized the nature of the images. But you did no such thing."
Dunks joined London's Metropolitan Police in 1997 and was trained to deal with child witnesses. Since joining the force, he transferred to another station that dealt with more serious crimes.