South Jersey police sergeant indicted, accused of obtaining explicit images of children
VINELAND, New Jersey (WPVI) -- A police sergeant in South Jersey was indicted by a grand jury on Wednesday.
Christopher Ortiz with the Vineland Police Department is accused of misusing his position to obtain images of child sexual abuse from a case his department was investigating.
He's now charged with endangering the welfare of a child by possessing child exploitation material, official misconduct, and tampering with public records.
Ortiz has also been suspended without pay since March 2023.
According to the Atlantic County Prosecutor's Office, the investigation began when the Internet Crimes Against Children unit received a tip from a cloud-based storage provider.
The tip was about explicit files that had been uploaded by one of their users.
Detectives reviewed 76 files, some of which they said showed juveniles engaged in sexual acts.
Prosecutors say those files were traced back to Ortiz of Estell Manor, New Jersey.
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