Brett Kenneth Hensley, a San Diego police officer who ran a website that teaches kids how to safely surf the Internet, has been convicted of making and possessing child porn.
What kind of a prison sentence would a hypocritical asshole a poor straying soul like that get, you think? Five years? Ten? More?
Try this on for size: 30 days of community service. Then Mr. Predator will be on probation for five years, and that's it. Such a sentence — so light as to be weightless — wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that Mr. Hensley is a police veteran, would it?
Writes one commenter on this site:
Channel 7, the NBC affiliate in San Diego, went so far as to blur Hensley's face in their video, and referred to him only as "a former San Diego police officer." Do you think Channel 7 would show the same courtesy to the accused if it was you or me? Of course not. And do you think a doctor, a dentist, or a man who worked in a laundromat or a convenience store would get probation for what this ex-cop did? I rather doubt it. Such are the special privileges that come with being a police officer.
Presumably, Hensley would have fared even better if he'd been sentenced by this magistrate, or this one, or especially (double-special eeeww!!) this one. Remember, these judges are among the august arbiters of law and morality who'll throw you and me in jail if we display a lawn sign or body jewelry they don't happen to like.
Feel better about our justice system yet?
That guy needs a bullet....ditto the moron who imposed that non-sentence and the news media that always refers to disgraced blue-boys as "former police officers" along with whomever decided his privacy was worth protecting by blurring his face.
Let's see who else needs a bullet for this one?
Posted by: Loretta Nall | Monday, October 10, 2005 at 07:17 AM
Come on people, don't be so over the top here -> I quote "Hensley never distributed child porn or tried to meet any minors in person, the attorney said." (Thus I have no idea whatsoever how he managed to create Child porn without meeting minors).
Based on the rest of the article, I'm assuming he probably had some sexually explict pictures of a 16-17 year old taken from a webcam that was given to him freely. This isn't a guy that's going and filming sexual videos of 4 year olds, It's a guy that is consensualy given pictures of a person that is legal in a few months anyway. This is just another reason I think there needs to be an explict standard somewhere after 14 or so where if there is consent it is a lesser crime.
Posted by: .... | Monday, October 10, 2005 at 01:15 PM
Just finishing my fault here, this guy is also now has to registered as a sexual criminal for crimes against a minor. Tell me is it really fair that this guy that just had consenusal pictures that were given to him, is labeled the same in a community as somebody that raped a 6 year old?
Posted by: .... | Monday, October 10, 2005 at 01:18 PM
>>I'm assuming he probably had some sexually explict pictures of a 16-17 year old taken from a webcam that was given to him freely<<
Well, you know what happens when you assume, but let's say, for the sake of argument, that this is correct. This would certainly not put him in the same category as a guy who films and distributes the rape of a nine-year-old, I'll grant you that. My post was not about how much more severely he should have been punished, but about the disconcerting fact that there seem to be several standards of justice here -- for instance, one for regular schmucks, and one for police officers. If Hensley gets 30 days community service, all perps guilty of the same crime under more or less the same circumstances should get such a sentence. If everybody else -- doctors, cable installers, insurance salesmen, gas station attendants -- gets, on average, five years behind bars, then not a single cop deserves an exception. If anything, such predators whould be punished more harshly, seeing as they've just shat all over the public's confidence. This should not be a difficult idea to comprehend.
Posted by: Rogier | Monday, October 10, 2005 at 03:27 PM
I have a coworker whose brother was caught in a sting when he downloaded pictures of underage girls from a website out of state.
He was sentenced to SIX YEARS in FEDERAL PRISON. He is in the same prison that John Gotti was in.
This ex-cop tried to LURE AN UNDERAGE GIRL into sending him pictures. If that's not predatory, I don't know what is.
But 30 days of community service sounds fair compared to six years of federal prison.
Posted by: DuggleBogey | Tuesday, October 11, 2005 at 11:19 AM