A federal judge on Monday sentenced a former Long Beach police officer to five years and 10 months in prison for collecting and sharing images of children being sexually abused.

Anthony Brown, 57, was also ordered to pay a $15,000 fine and submit to supervision for the rest of his life after his release from prison, according to an announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles.

Brown was arrested while on duty in February 2021, and in March this year, he pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography.

In a plea agreement, Brown admitted to using his smartphone to access the social network MeWe, where he regularly shared pictures and videos of children being sexually abused between October 2019 and May 13, 2020. Brown acknowledged he sometimes did this while he was on duty patrolling Long Beach Airport.

Some of the images he shared included children who appeared to be between 7 and 10 years old, according to prosecutors, who said Brown also participated in graphic chats where he fantasized about forcing a fictitious 13-year-old niece and 8-year-old daughter into having sex with men.

Brown’s defense had sought a sentence of only 5 years, the minimum allowed by law, saying this situation was a “classic example of a good person doing a bad thing.”

Brown is not a pedophile, they argued in a sentencing memo, but he turned to “taboo porn” in a misguided attempt to cope with the stress and trauma of his 27 years working as a police officer.

A psychologist hired by the defense wrote that Brown turned to self-destructive behavior in part because he feared the department would ridicule and reassign him if he’d sought therapy for depression and PTSD. Brown told the doctor that police work was horrible for him, leaving him feeling alienated and “hating myself.”

“But I don’t want to blame anyone else,” Brown is quoted as saying. “I became a cop, and then I became an asshole.”

This was exacerbated during racial justice protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, according to the doctor’s report.

“I didn’t want to talk to people [referring to the general public],” Brown is quoted as saying. “There was a lot of hatred being directed to me.”

In his plea, Brown admitted to sharing at least 10 images of child pornography, but his lawyers say he was only ever charged with sharing or storing five photographs and one video clip on his MeWe account.

But, prosecutors countered, “That argument would carry significantly more weight had the government been able to accurately assess the number of images and videos in defendant’s possession.”

Brown was able to erase his smartphone before investigators could search it because the detective assigned to the case contacted him early on in the process and said child pornography was being shared from his MeWe account.

The detective told Brown the case would be dropped as long as the activity stopped, according to defense attorneys, who said the detective did this “presumably because of the small amount” of child pornography.

Long Beach police say it was only after this phone call that the detective realized Brown was a police officer.

About two months later, police searched Brown’s phone and discovered someone had performed a factory reset on it almost immediately after the detective contacted him. After that, Brown was allowed to remain on duty for more than six months until the LBPD arrested him, at which point he retired from the force.

A Police Department spokesman said Brown stayed on the job until then because a “preliminary review of the investigation did not initially warrant the officer to be removed from their work.”

Detective told suspect she’d drop case if he stopped sharing child pornography