Police arrested Officer Donald
Glunt, 57, a 34-year veteran of the Lynden Police Department, on charges of
child pornography after he was caught texting with a 16-year-old girl in Texas.
BY NICOLE HENSLEY
LINKEDINDonald Glunt, 57, and a
16-year-old girl shared more than 155 text messages — as well as naked images
of the teen, according to court documents.
A peek at the phone records of
a Washington state cop revealed more than 155 text messages between a teenage
girl in Texas and photos of her naked body.
The copious texts listed on the
phone bill of Officer Donald Glunt, 57, tipped off a sergeant and led to a
meeting. He had been texting with a woman, Glunt told the sergeant, and called
it a "lapse of judgment," according to court documents filed April
29.
That "woman" was
actually a 16-year-old girl.
The officer had spent his
entire law enforcement career at Lynden Police Department. He is also an expert
on sexual predators and human trafficking and has taught classes on those
subjects since 2011.
He resigned April 21 after the
allegations surfaced, reported the Bellingham Herald.
In the meeting, the sergeant
exchanged the phone for another - one without text messaging capabilities.
However, Glunt wanted to delete
something first. The sergeant denied him the opportunity and then discovered
the object of Glunt's affection: several nude photos of the teen.
The girl knew the officer as
"Don from Washington," she told Texas investigators. He had recently
texted her and said he was in trouble, she claimed. If the authorities called,
she needed to lie about her age, he allegedly told her.
She let detectives download all
the data from her cellphone, the documents said.
The two talked through texts
and on an online role-playing game.
Glunt was arrested April 25 and
charged with possession of child pornography.
The Washington State Patrol
issued several search warrants for Glunt's work and personal property including
phones, laptops and desktop computers. They found thousands of images of
children that he claimed he collected for presentations on exploited kids.
Glunt told detectives he had
deleted some photos from one of his laptops after his phone was taken away. He
also said he used his laptop to look at porn and child modeling sites, the
documents said.