A former police officer who downloaded child abuse videos while still serving was jailed for a year yesterday.
Derek Kennedy, from Dundee, was also placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years after being caught with thousands of sickening images.
Detectives discovered nearly 5,000 images and more than 18 hours of graphic video footage when they carried out a raid on their ex-colleague’s home.
Kennedy, who was serving with Police Scotland when he started downloading illicit material in 2016, initially claimed he had done so by accident.
Analysis of his devices showed he had filed them in specific folders and installed special equipment to try to hide the material.
He told officers “something in the back of my mind made me keep them” when they found a number of the depraved pictures on his mobile phone.
At first he denied having a sexual interest in the material but was later found to have stored and backed up a large haul of images and videos over three years.
Kennedy, 34, admitted downloading the material at his home in Butters Road, Dundee, between August 10 2016 and July 16 last year.
Fiscal depute Eilidh Robertson told Dundee Sheriff Court: “He has no previous convictions… and is currently unemployed.
“On August 29 2019 the police carried out a search at the accused’s home and seized a mobile telephone. Indecent images of children were recovered during preliminary analysis.
“He was arrested and taken to police HQ in Dundee. He admitted he had downloaded indecent images of children, but had not done it intentionally and couldn’t understand why he kept them.
“He said ‘something in the back of my mind made me keep them’.”
She said two laptops and the phone were seized and Kennedy was found to have moved the collection into various folders on the devices.
“There was evidence he had copied some from one laptop to another and had also copied some on the phone into a specific folder.
“Peer-to-peer file sharing software had been used to search and download indecent images of children. He had privacy tools on one laptop and was using the Tor browser to enable anonymity.”
Ms Robertson told the court Kennedy was caught with 4,707 indecent images and 1,118 videos featuring children from infant age up to 15.
“The images featured both males and females but mainly females. The videos had 18 hours, six minutes and 40 seconds total run time.”
The bulk of the material was defined as Category A – the most serious.
Solicitor Theo Finlay, defending, said: “He has had a history of mental health difficulties.”
