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a former top Police The officer has pleaded guilty to viewing child sexual abuse material as well as other illegal material at work.
Javon McSkimming, 52, was new zealandHe was deputy police commissioner from 2023 until May this year, when he stepped down after an investigation revealed illegal images.
He did not speak during the hearing in Wellington District Court and had no comment afterward, local media outlets reported.
His lawyer entered a guilty plea to possession of illegal material, which McSkimming had accessed on his work phone and laptop.
Court documents state that since July 2020, McSkimming had accessed hundreds of child sexual abuse photographs and images through Google searches, including real, artificially generated and cartoon images.
They also demanded illegal sexual material involving animals.
The investigators found that nearly a third of his total Internet searches during work hours over a four-and-a-half-year period were of a pornographic nature.
Case has prompted investigation law enforcement and an independent review of safeguards on police technology.
A report urged police to increase monitoring of staff’s Internet use, filtering mechanisms for harmful content and increased monitoring of agency equipment.
New Zealand’s police chief, Commissioner Richard Chambers, described McSkimming’s conduct as disgraceful and shameful and said it went “against the core values” of the police.
“I will not allow this to taint my employees, who are as horrified by this as I am,” Chambers said.
The investigation into McSkimming’s Internet use began when investigators investigated a separate complaint against him by a member of the public. The result of that inquiry has not been made public.
McSkimming, a police officer since 1996, was suspended on full pay in December 2024.
According to court documents, he became aware of the investigation into his Internet use in March and admitted to two colleagues that he had found ways to bypass police computer system blocks to access sexual material.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in December. The charges carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.