Tim Gurrister,
Standard-Examiner staff
BRIGHAM CITY -- Former
Tremonton police officer Jeremy Rose has been charged with 15 offenses in the
collection of thousands of photos of a teenage girl in various stages of
undress.
Rose was arrested and booked
into the Box Elder County Jail Thursday, said Utah Attorney General's Office
spokeswoman Missy Larsen, and is scheduled for arraignment April 7 before 1st
District Judge Ben Hadfield.
Rose, 37, is charged with nine
counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, a second-degree felony, and two
counts of voyeurism, a third-degree felony. He's also charged with single
counts of dealing in material harmful to a minor, communications fraud,
obstruction of justice, and stalking, all felonies but the stalking, a class A
misdemeanor.
While employed by the Tremonton
force, Rose convinced a then-15-year-old Tremonton girl to pose semi-nude for
photos he said he would sell for her on the Internet and to private buyers,
according to charging documents. That was a ruse in order to collect the photos
for himself, the charges say.
He also allegedly hid a camera
in the girl's bedroom to record video of her dressing and undressing.
Rose is being held in lieu of
$145,000 bail. The case was handed off by the Box Elder County Attorney's
Office last year to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest since
prosecutors there had worked with Rose for years.
Rose resigned from the
Tremonton department in July after investigation began by the Attorney
General's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which was assisted by
Tremonton police.
The case features a 15-page
probable cause affidavit, a document rarely longer than a page.
It details Rose's apparent
obsession with the teen beginning in early 2012 and continuing through much of
last year until his initial arrest in June. Due to the complex investigation
detailed in the affidavit, the charges weren't filed until Thursday by the
attorney general's office. Rose was a
12-year veteran on the Tremonton force.
Rose set up fake email accounts
and links to a bogus online company where he told her he was selling the
photos, the affidavit says.
He sent emails under assumed
names from the fake company encouraging her in her nude and semi-nude posing
for photos with Rose, as well as those she took herself and sent to the fake
Internet site, according to the affidavit.
They told her she could make
more money by wearing less clothing, one of the emails said.
Investigators were informed
last June by Rose's wife that he had confessed to her and other family members,
according to the affidavit.
The thousands of images of the
minor were found on Rose's several cell phones "as well the laptop
computer he was assigned through his employment at the Tremonton Police
Department," it reads.
The document refers to Rose paying
the girl $300 for her pictures and buying her an iPhone for her picture-taking.