Ex-Long Beach police officer pleads guilty in child porn case

A former Long Beach police officer pleaded guilty Monday to distributing child pornography, including while on duty.

Anthony Brown, 57, of Lakewood, entered the plea to a single federal count.

In his plea agreement, Brown acknowledged using his mobile phone to log into the internet-based messaging application MeWe to distribute sexually explicit images of underage girls in November 2019, March 2020 and April 2020, the U.S. attorney's office said in a statement.

Brown also possessed an image of a girl who appeared to be 11 or 12 years old, prosecutors said.

Brown, a 27-year veteran of the Police Department, left the force last year after his arrest on state charges of possessing an distributing child pornography, prosecutors said.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office later dismissed the charges because of the federal case, the U.S. attorney's office said.

Brown could face five years up to 20 years in prison when he is sentenced in July.

A representative for MeWe, Marketing Director David Westreich, emailed CBSLA, saying the 57-year-old Brown was removed from the messaging app and reported to the authorities. Weistrich further added:

"MeWe has a strong Terms of Service that prohibits illegal activity of any kind. MeWe is vigilant about this issue and we have an outstanding Trust and Safety Team that works hard every day to proactively investigate and take action against TOS-violators. Illegal activity is reported to law enforcement at MeWe's discretion and law enforcement can follow procedures in our terms to request information from us."