SANTA ROSA, Calif. (KGO) -- Several employees of a North Bay police department are coming forward to say their chief retaliated after they complained about being exposed to child porn. This case raises serious questions about how that department handles evidence.
It's very unusual for current employees of a police department to complain on camera about their chief, but they tell the I-Team they had to because the stress is affecting their health and their careers are on the line.
Around 3 p.m. on Jan. 9, 2013 at Santa Rosa Junior College, campus police arrested Matthew Whitaker for viewing child porn on a public computer -- an open and shut case. He told officers, "Don't judge me, it's not my fault, I'm a pedophile."
Student Reporter JoshuOne Barnes covered the case, and told the I-Team, "And as he got arrested, he was asking, 'How much time am I going to get?' You know, he was like not trying to deny it at all."
Fast forward 15 months to April 26 of this year, back at the campus police station, Community Service Officer Wendy Wasik spotted a thumb drive plugged into a computer that records phone calls and radio traffic. She took the thumb drive to the dispatch area to find out who owned it.
Wasik said, "When I plugged it in and happen to click on the file, very graphic, disturbing images popped up on the screen and as I went 'Oh', they all looked."
Two police dispatchers also saw the pictures of girls 8 to 12 years of age engaged in sexual acts with adult men. It was the evidence from the Whitaker case. Vanessa Spaeth has heard a lot in 24 years as a dispatcher, but seeing the child porn shook her: "It made me feel like I had done something wrong in viewing that, it's illegal."
"It's among the most sensitive evidence you can ever imagine," according to Jim Hammer, who served as a prosecutor and San Francisco police commissioner. "Child pornography, every time that evidence is possessed by somebody or shown to somebody else, that child is victimized again and again and again."
The three Santa Rosa JC police employees took what happened up the chain of command, finally to Chief Matt McCaffrey.
SRJC police dispatcher Josh Richards told the I-Team, "He just didn't want to have anything to do with it, sweep it under the rug, 'It's no big deal, you guys didn't see anything, go on with your job.'"
McCaffrey did order an internal affairs investigation that found the thumb drive belonged to a couple working for the department -- a dispatcher and her husband, an officer. In addition to the child porn, the thumb drive contained a family photo, the couple's refinance documents and utility bills.
The dispatcher and her husband did not answer our phone calls, and would not speak with Dan Noyes when he approached them after a public swearing in ceremony two weeks ago.
Noyes: "I want to ask you about the child porn on your thumb drive."
Officer: "I have no comment."
Dan: "Why was that there?"
The officer walked away. We are not identifying the couple because this could be a mistake. The wife told internal affairs she copied the child porn to her thumb drive to make a CD for the district attorney's office, but "she neglected to delete the images from her personal thumb drive" and "thought she had lost it several months ago."
The internal affairs investigator tells Noyes next, he wanted to interview the husband, that police officer. But the chief told him not to. McCaffrey shut down the investigation.
The chief did not return our emails and phone calls for an interview, so Noyes also caught up to him after that ceremony.
Noyes: "Why stop the internal affairs investigation into the thumb drive?"
McCaffrey: "Do you have an interview already scheduled this afternoon?"
Dan: "I want to talk to you about it."
McCaffrey did not answer the questions and referred us to the school administration.
Former prosecutor Hammer tells us this deserves a full investigation, to determine once and for all if it was a mistake or something worse. He asked, "Is this a crime? Is this possibly intentionally possessed? If it is, that's a very serious crime and if somebody in law enforcement's doing that within the department, it is even more serious."
Santa Rosa Junior College President Frank Chong tells Noyes he had no idea McCaffrey shut down the internal affairs investigation into the child porn.
Chong said, "I'm not aware of that."
And Chong has taken steps to help his police department do a better job in the future.
Noyes: "Are you satisfied that the child porn was handled well by your department?"
Chong: "No, I'm not. It wasn't a good procedure to have someone use their personal thumb drive to put business on it. We've made changes to insure that doesn't happen again."
The three police employees say they have been pressured and reassigned after coming forward about what they saw. They have filed EEOC complaints of hostile work environment and retaliation, and are preparing to sue the department. We'll keep you up to date on what happens.