northwestgeorgia.com: Former Forsyth deputy sheriff sentenced on child porn charges.More corrupt and hypocritical double standards of police officers and public officials possessing child pornography.
Gainesville — Milton Scott Pruitt, 41, of the Forsyth County Sheriff Department, was sentenced today by United States District Judge William C. O’Kelley on charges of receiving and possessing child pornography.
Acting United States Attorney Sally Quillian Yates said of the case, “This defendant was once entrusted with protecting the public’s safety as a law enforcement officer but chose to violate that public trust by victimizing innocent children when he used the internet to receive child pornography on his home computer. To make matters worse, on at least one occasion, he also used a Forsyth County Sheriff’s computer to view child pornography while he was working. By prosecuting child pornography offenders such as defendant Pruitt, this office is working to make our community safer for our children. This sentence underscores the substantial consequences for people who possess images of children being sexually exploited.”
While working the overnight shift on March 15, 2007, Pruitt, a sergeant supervising other patrol deputies, used his in-car laptop computer to access child pornography stored as evidence in a Forsyth County detective’s computer file. Pruitt accessed and viewed 10 images of young children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. Pruitt’s illicit computer activity was discovered several weeks later by an employee of Forsyth County’s information technology department, who reported Pruitt's conduct to the Sheriff’s Office. The Sheriff’s Office referred the case to the GBI. During a subsequent interview with a GBI agent, Pruitt admitted that he accessed and viewed the pornographic images because he was “just curious.”
Following his admission, GBI seized Pruitt’s home computer and conducted a forensic examination of its hard drive. The examination revealed more than a hundred images of child pornography and numerous Internet searches for such images.
