Pompton Lakes cop pleads guilty after sexual relationship with teenager

A Pompton Lakes police officer and resident pleaded guilty to a charge of child endangerment after his arrest on allegations he carried on a sexual relationship with a suicidal teen he met while working as an EMS.

Prosecutors have asked for five years' probation for the officer, Mark Stinnard, 37, who admitted as part of his plea deal to having a sexual relationship with the underage victim and accepting nude photos of the girl that were discovered on his cellphone.

During a detention hearing earlier this year, Stinnard's attorneys argued that his phone showed no proof he had explicitly requested the photos.

Stinnard pleaded guilty to a third-degree crime, which prevents him from being a police officer in New Jersey, Pompton Lakes Police Chief Derek Clark said. Stinnard will be terminated once the department finalizes paperwork with the judge, Clark said. Stinnard has been suspended without pay or benefits since the department was made aware of the accusations and is not allowed in the building, the chief said.

"[Stinnard] betrayed the trust of his office, and we had to get rid of him," Clark said.

The state has also requested that as a part of his sentence, he be barred from current and future employment with a public agency and attend sex offender therapy.

Stinnard is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 21, prosecutors said Monday.

An affidavit filed in the case against the officer said he met the victim in 2017 while working for Pompton Lakes' EMS service when she was taken to the hospital after a suicide attempt.

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Afterward, the two stayed in contact via text and social media apps and a sexual relationship commenced between the two. Prosecutors have said it took place on Stinnard's personal time.

However, when the victim became pregnant and later had a miscarriage in April 2018, the relationship ended, prosecutors said.

"This is a case about the defendant knowing the vulnerability of this child, knowing that she had attempted suicide, knowing that she was emotionally unstable," Passaic County Senior Assistant Prosecutor Anneris Hernandez argued during a hearing in October, "and then decides to have a sexual relationship with her."

The victim first reported Stinnard's actions to Riverdale police in 2018 and filed for a restraining order, which was granted but only on a temporary basis, Hernandez had said.

Stinnard's plea deal does not include an original charge of possessing child sexual abuse material — also known as CASM, a term preferred by victim advocates and law enforcement to describe what many call child pornography.

Clark said the Pompton Lakes Police Department will take a look at its recruiting process, noting that there weren't any red flags when Stinnard was hired, citing a clean record before becoming a police officer.

"We are in the midst of self-evaluating," Clark said. "If you can do something to prevent this in the future."

Protecting minors

And although Stinnard first met his victim in person, police departments have been working tirelessly to combat predatory behavior of adults toward minors online but say they're lacking much-needed resources to deal with the deluge of complaints received.

Most tech companies use PhotoDNA, a unique digital signature, or "hash," that is used against other photos to find abuse material. But it is also a decade-old technology, and few companies have invested in advancements to identify CSAM, experts said.

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Even if all online companies stepped up their efforts and reported more abuse to the national center, already swamped law enforcement agencies would fall even farther behind, experts said.

“What do you do with 60 million reports a month?” said Matthew Green, a cryptographer and a professor at Johns Hopkins University. “We don’t have the police to deal with [it].”

The PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008, sponsored by Biden when he was a U.S. senator from Delaware, authorized Congress to spend $60 million a year to support the nation's 61 Internet Crimes Against Children task forces, made up of local and regional law enforcement.

The closest Congress ever came to fully funding the task forces was when it used economic stimulus money in 2009. The most it has earmarked since then was $36 million in the 2019 fiscal year, according to the Justice Department.

The federal money is typically used to train investigators and purchase equipment, but rarely do law enforcement agencies have full-time staff dedicated to child abuse investigations. And the average police department in the U.S. employs fewer than 10 sworn officers, according to the Justice Department.

Even federal agencies are stretched thin.

"If I were king for a day, I would set up an agency that is dedicated to this crime type, because it’s so prolific," said Jim Cole, a Department of Homeland Security agent in Nashville. "I could take every agent in my office and dedicate it to this crime type and still be busy."

Staff Writer Dustin Racioppi contributed to this article.

Nicholas Katzban is a breaking news reporter for NorthJersey.com. To get breaking news directly to your inbox, sign up for our newsletter.

Email: katzban@northjersey.com

Twitter: @nicholaskatzban

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Pompton Lakes cop pleads guilty after sexual relationship with teen