Morgan Sellman, an Aurora police sergeant arrested Friday on suspicion of possessing hundreds of videos of child pornography depicting victims as young as 2, toted some of the porn in a personal laptop that he brought to work, Colorado Springs police said in an arrest warrant.
The laptop case — obtained from his office — also contained sex toys, police said.
Sellman, 39, who coordinated the department’s D.A.R.E. anti- drug program, was arrested in El Paso County and booked into jail on suspicion of sexual exploitation of a child, a Class 3 felony that carries a maximum sentence of 12 years in prison.
He was later released on a $10,000 bond, a jail official said.
There is no evidence that Sellman had illegal contact with children, Colorado Springs police spokesman Sgt. Steve Noblitt said in a news release.
The police Internet Crimes against Children Task Force began investigating Nov. 11 after receiving a tip from a Westminster police officer who found illegal material while probing a publicly accessible file-sharing network, Colorado Springs police Detective Clayton Blackwell said in an arrest affidavit.
Detectives linked some of the material to an Internet account registered to Sellman and his wife, Blackwell said.
A search of Sellman’s home in Peyton on Wednesday turned up laptop computers from which child porn had been deleted, police said. The illegal images remained in the computers’ cache files, police said.
The computer room, however, was missing the laptop that Sellman normally hooked up to the home’s Internet connection.
Sellman’s wife told investigators that her husband carried the computer to work in a camouflage-patterned laptop bag. An Aurora police supervisor collected the computer and tote bag at the request of Colorado Springs police.
Police say the computer contained more than 240 illegal videos, including one of a man molesting a girl believed to be between 2 and 4 years old. Other files showed similar sex acts involving prepubescent boys and girls.
Sellman is a 14-year veteran of the Aurora Police Department whose most recent assignment entailed purchasing police equipment and supplies and coordinating the anti-drug program that sends officers to Aurora schools.
He last taught children as a D.A.R.E. liaison in 2001, Aurora police spokesman detective Robert Friel said in a written statement.
