A hearing for Timothy Martinez, the disgraced NYPD officer accused of paying for explicit pics from a Twitter user he thought was underage, contained even more shocking allegations on Tuesday. Federal prosecutors alleged that Martinez also went on Skype video calls with girls as young as 13 to coerce them to strip, and that a laptop seized from his Staten Island home had over 400 downloaded photos of child sexual abuse. Defense attorneys refuted the allegations by claiming there’s not enough proof that Martinez—an Army veteran—was on the video calls because he never showed his face on camera, and arguing the “disgusting” pictures on the laptop could have been downloaded by any of the “hundreds” of soldiers who had access to the computer on bases overseas. Tuesday’s hearing was the first in a long-awaited trial as the feds try to put away Martinez—who was arrested in 2020 but is listed as being on “paid extended leave” with the NYPD—on a child pornography charge.
Read it at New York Post
