CANTON, Ga. — Forsyth County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Grady Sanford was arrested at his home Tuesday morning in Canton by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and charged with two counts of distributing child pornography.
The arrest came after investigators got a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that photos of child sexual abuse had been uploaded to the internet via email.
The GBI opened an investigation and was able to trace the computer IP address to a physical address that matched up with Sanford’s home. They were then able to get a warrant to search the home and that’s when Sanford was arrested and taken to the Cherokee County jail.
GBI Investigators notified Forsyth County Sheriff Ron Freeman before executing the warrant. Freeman said he fired Sanford immediately once he was informed investigators found what they were looking for.
“To say this is a shock is a gross understatement. We intentionally set our standards high at Forsyth County. Regardless of rank, every employee must meet those moral and legal standards. There is no room for this type of crime in our State, and certainly not in the law enforcement profession. Our trust and that of our community has been betrayed. I’ve made a commitment to be transparent, even when one of our own employees does wrong. No one is exempt and no one is above the law,” said Sheriff Freeman.
The investigation was part of a joint effort between the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force and the GBI. The ICAC program was created by the Department of Justice to help respond to the potential exploitation of children and teens on the internet by potential predators.
The ICAC and GBI urge anyone with information about cases of child exploitation to contact the GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes unit at 404-270-8870.
