A former Perryton police officer was sentenced Thursday to 17 years in federal prison for child pornography offenses, announced U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas Chad E. Meacham.
Aaron Bennett Daugherty, 36, pleaded guilty in July to transportation of child pornography. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, who also ordered a lifetime of supervised release following completion of the sentence.
According to plea papers, Mr. Daugherty was nabbed in an undercover FBI investigation into individuals using Kik, a social media app popular among teenagers, to share explicit images of children.
On June 9 2020, a Kik user with an obscene screenname – later identified as Mr. Daugherty – shared a video file depicting an adult male engaged in sexual acts with a blindfolded prepubescent child.
“I’m here to look at CP, everybody,” the user posted two weeks later. “Go on with the CP content!”
Law enforcement later contacted Mr. Daugherty at the Perryton Police Department. He admitted that he used Kik to view and share child pornography, adding that child porn did not “bother” him.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office – Amarillo Resident Agency, the Texas Rangers, and the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office conducted the investigation with the full cooperation of the Perryton Police Department. Assistant U.S. Attorney Joshua Frausto is prosecuting the case.