North Las Vegas Mayor Is Not Familiar With His Kiddie Porn, No Siree

It's that age-old story. You open your iPad and the internet goblins have put a bunch of kiddie porn on it, so you freak out and call the cops, who are your friends, because you are the mayor of North Las Vegas, Nevada, and they come get it and wipe it clean for you. Wait, what? This is a thing that happened, though details are very, very sketchy. According to a police report from a certain Detective Mark Hoyt, North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee "grabbed" an officer at the City Hall one day in October, because there was kiddie porn on his computer. But he didn't put it there!

Reached for comment Thursday, Lee said he wasn’t investigated for possession of child pornography — he was a victim. He said he contacted police because he was worried children were being harmed and he felt he should give them his iPad in case it could stop a bad guy.

But Lee’s version of the events doesn’t match the police report or [former police chief Joseph] Chronister’s account of what happened.

Imagine that! No, it is difficult to imagine, because kiddie porn does not actually tend to just "pop up" on people's computers. It's sort of like when the poor pastor's wife calls the Comcast because of "all these mistaken pay-per-view porn charges" on her bill. Usually, if it's there, someone put it there.

Lee claimed the kiddie porn images came to his computer via an email somebody sent, so detectives picked up the possibly porny iPad ELEVEN DAYS LATER, and checked it out for one whole day. They found no kiddie porn emails, but Lee had some porn in his browser history (surprise), including one site where a detective found "several possible photos that could be considered child porno­graphy," but it came from another country, where they have different definitions of "kiddie porn" or what constitutes a child, we guess?

All this confused retired FBI agent Joseph Dooley, because it's fucking confusing is why:

“If he thinks it’s child porn, it’s child porn. It doesn’t matter what country it’s in,” Dooley said. “That sentence makes no sense to me.”

He also questioned why the department waited so long to seize the iPad after the mayor told them it might have illegal content. [...]

“If you suspect you have child porn on the device, that’s like having a kilo of cocaine sitting on your coffee table,” he said.

Since they didn't find any gross kiddie porn on the iPad, the cops of course just went ahead and took it to the Apple Store and got it wiped clean. Wait, huh? If there was no kiddie porn on it, WHY WOULD IT NEED TO BE WIPED? Retired FBI agent Dooley also had the same question: "But there was no crime, what crime are they wiping evidence of?"He's also quite curious why the police department would be running that little Apple store errand for the mayor. Maybe they DID find something? Maybe they didn't but they're just weird and incompetent? Hard to say!

For his part, Mayor Lee is very confused why the cops couldn't find the kiddie porn email, because he totally saved it, because he wanted the bad guy email sender caught. All he knows is that he got an email, and "there were people who were doing evil to children." Lee added that he "doesn't have anything to do with that sin." So, good for him?

Former police chief Chronister -- who JUST retired, by the way, interesting that we are all talking about this now HMMM -- says this wasn't the first time the mayor acted super weird about a thing. Apparently, just a week before the kiddie porn freak-out, he called them trying to get them to debug his phone, because people are always bugging the phones of the mayors of Las Vegas suburbs, all the time. And of course, Mayor Lee says nope, he did not call them about that, no way. The Las Vegas Review-Journal actually listened to a copy of the voicemail, so we are guessing Lee is lying or confused.

So, is Mayor Lee a kiddie porn enthusiast? Is he mentally ill? Is former police chief Chronister acting out some sort of personal vendetta against the mayor that forced him out? ALL OF THE ABOVE? Sorry, Wonkers, but we're going to have to leave you with more questions than answers this time.

[ Las Vegas Review-Journal   via   Gawker ]