sex and power, a volatile combination

A Texas cop took advantage of people accused of sex offenses, making them pose naked for photos for his personal collection.

[The police officer] allegedly told suspects that a new law required him to photograph them in the nude.  According to one suspect, officer [the police officer] insisted on having a photo of the mans erect penis, which he said was a new requirement for the state’s sex offender registry. ...

According to the complaint, [the police officer] told the man that a new state law required him to take nude photographs of all accused sex offenders, as evidence, and for records in the state’s sex offender registry. 

The sex offender registry gave this cop the power to do what he did. Laws did not explicitly give him that power to abuse people in custody but fear of the public humiliation imposed by the registry made people suspected of sex crimes vulnerable to his perverted demands.

During the investigation it was discovered that he had a large collection of naked photos from accused sex offenders, and that this activity had likely taken place over a long period of time. It is also highly possible that a number of these suspects were innocent or wrongly accused, because in many circumstances these photos were taken after the initial arrests, before any formal court dates had taken place.

Like people in general, some cops are going to have weird ideas about sex and some of them are going to commit crimes because of those ideas. Knowing that society has been encouraged to revile sex offenders gives bad law enforcement officers the freedom to indulge their own desires to humiliate.

Give a badge and a gun to the wrong person and bad things will happen. 

It will be interesting to see if this cop loses his job over these allegations. Too often, a cop accused of brutality will keep his (or her) job.