Firefighter Fired, Accused Of Possessing Child Porn
MIAMI (CBSMiami) --City of Miami Fire Rescue fired one of their own Wednesday after he was arrested earlier this week on charges of possessing and receiving child pornography.
The department issued a statement saying, " After careful consideration of the facts surrounding the arrest of Mr. Alexander Rousseau, the City of Miami Department of Fire-Rescue has elected to immediately terminate Mr. Rousseau from employment with the Department."
Rousseau faced a judge Wednesday morning at a bond hearing. He currently has no bond.
The 30-year old was arrested following an investigation performed by the FBI.
Using special investigative software, authorities said they managed to track the child pornography to Rousseau's personal laptop computer at a fire station.
The FBI and City of Miami Police Department executed a search warrant on April 6 and discovered the laptop downloading numerous items containing child pornography.
"It really wasn't the firefighter we knew," said Robert Suarez, President of the Miami Association of Firefighters.
Suarez said he was called to Fire Station Number 6 Sunday when the FBI arrived.
He told CBS4, "All our paramedic firefighters at the station they had taken all of their phones away which was very unusual. We went to see what was going on and we weren't told anything at all by the authorities." He continued, "We really had very little indication what they were there for until they left with him."
Investigators said the videos were downloaded while Rousseau was at work.
According to documents, Rousseau admitted to downloading and viewing some of the videos on the laptop, but did not admit to searching for them.
Suarez said he was surprised by the allegations. "He's got a pretty good reputation at work. He's a very well respected paramedic firefighter and nobody's really had any indication of anything unusual about him at all."
Suarez added, if the allegations are true, they are disturbing. "It's atrocious. It's obviously horrible and anyone who's guilty of that sort of thing has no business obviously being out of jail and let alone doing what we do."
Rousseau had been a member of the Department of Fire Rescue since October 2007.