By By Sean Longoria
Chico Enterprise-Record
REDDING, Calif. — A California Highway Patrol officer accused of possessing child pornography took a photo of a young girl’s fully clothed crotch in the classroom of the Anderson school where his wife teaches, CHP investigators said in documents filed in Shasta County Superior Court.
Gerald “Gary” Roland Harris, 45, pleaded not guilty Monday to two felony counts of possessing child pornography, a felony count of using a computer without authorization, a misdemeanor count of annoying a child younger than 1, and two special allegations.
He also faces 13 felonies and one misdemeanor charge related to a cache of guns, drugs, explosives and driver’s licenses found Feb. 21 during a search of his Deschutes Road home.
Harris will be back in court Sept. 4 for a plea disposition and his preliminary hearing was set for the following day.
The case has been delayed several times at the request of prosecutors, who have said they needed more time to investigate the child porn charges, which were filed Thursday.
Harris turned himself in Friday at Shasta County jail and was released the same day on $75,000 bail, a watch commander at the jail said Monday.
The investigation began when a fellow officer found adult porn on Harris’ CHP-issued laptop while trying to fix the computer.
“Most of the pornographic images were of a past girlfriend of Gerald Harris, and/or Gerald Harris himself, engaged in acts that were intimate and sexual in nature,” investigators wrote in the report.
The image of his wife’s second-grade student dated 2010 was found on a flash drive seized during the CHP’s internal investigation into Harris. That same flash drive also contained thousands of adult porn pictures, investigators said.
The girl was sitting on a desk in a classroom, which officers later determined was at the Meadow Lane Elementary School, where Harris’ wife, Katherine, teaches second grade.
Officers later interviewed the girl in the photo, who said Harris was at the school almost every day between lunch and dismissal and would frequently take photos in his wife’s classroom.
“Although Gerald Harris would yell at the students for talking, the victim did not indicate Gerald Harris did anything inappropriate to her,” investigators said.
A computer technician at the school told police years earlier he’d found pornographic photographs on Katherine Harris’ school computer.
She had no idea how the images came to be on the computer and speculated that her husband may have placed them, according to CHP investigators.
Officers also seized nine more flash drives, six CDs and a second laptop during their initial investigation, although Harris claimed he stole disks containing child pornography from another officer’s locker to use for “insurance purposes” in the event the officer was promoted.
The CHP’s Computer Crimes Investigation Unit found adult pornography on both of the laptops.
A single image of child pornography was found on one department laptop, investigators said. On the other, investigators found one image of child pornography, four images of child erotica and about 100 images of naked children, which had all been viewed and deleted in the early morning hours by Harris, while on duty, according to the report.
Officers found many of the same images on one of the flash drives.
The internal investigation led to a criminal investigation and Harris turned himself in March 2 at Shasta County jail after an arrest warrant was issued the same day. Further investigation revealed none of the 11 illegal assault weapons found at Harris’ house were registered to him. Two of the guns were bought from a retired CHP officer at a sporting goods store in Medford, Ore.
Harris told the retired officer he’d “take care of getting them into California,” and the officer “wouldn’t have to worry about anything,” investigators wrote in the report.
The guns all had features that made them illegal in California, investigators said.
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