A former Aurora police officer has been sentenced for having sexually explicit photographs of a teenager on his cellphone.
Michael Mangino, 51, who was dismissed from the police
department after the March 9, 2011, incident, was sentenced Thursday to three
years in the Colorado Department of Corrections, according to an Adams County
District Attorney's Office media release. The execution of the sentence was
"stayed" for five years when Mangino agreed to immediately serve 90
days in the county jail and comply with terms of a sex offender management
board treatment program.
Mangino pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child, a
felony, on April 24. The victim in the case was in Mangino's custody when he
was a DARE officer with the department.
"Mr. Mangino, by his perverse and sexually deviant
actions, did great harm to the image of the Aurora Police Department,"
Police Chief Daniel J. Oates said in the release. "His violation of trust
caused great harm to our community, making it harder for the most vulnerable
victims to trust the police."
Mangino drove a runaway suspected of smoking pot to
Children's Hospital for a urine analysis so she could be medically cleared to
go to the Arapahoe County Juvenile Assessment Center.
According to an arrest affidavit and testimony during a
preliminary hearing, the girl told investigators that Mangino said he had
started taking photos of all the people he arrested. The girl told
investigators that she thought Mangino wanted her to take photos of her naked
body using his personal cellphone, and so she did.
Investigators found the photos on Mangino's cellphone,
according to the arrest affidavit and testimony.