Former Philly cop pleads guilty in child pornography case

A former Philadelphia police officer with a history of on-the-job sexual harassment complaints pleaded guilty Friday to federal child pornography charges.

William Watts Sr., 56, of Southwest Philadelphia, told a federal judge he’d amassed a collection of sexually explicit photos and videos he downloaded off the messaging service WhatsApp and communicated with at least one child predator who’d sent him pornographic images of a girl the man claimed to be his 11-year-old child.

Dressed in an olive prison jumpsuit, he sat next to his lawyer, David B. Mischak, and answered a series of questions from U.S. District Judge Joel Slomsky about his decision to plead.

“You did what the government says you did?” the judge asked at one point.

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Watts, who hung his head as prosecutors described the explicit images found on his account, responded with an assured: “Yes, I did, your honor.”

He now faces a mandatory minimum of five years in prison and could be sentenced to as many as 40 at a sentencing hearing scheduled for November.

A 32-year veteran of the force most recently assigned to the First Police District, which includes parts of South and Southwest Philadelphia, Watts lost his job shortly after his crimes came to light last year.

While he was an officer, multiple sexual harassment complaints were lodged against him, the most recent in 2002, when a woman alleged Watts caught her having sex with a man in a car and demanded that she perform oral sex on him and fondled her breasts.

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An Internal Affairs investigation failed to sustain those allegations because the alleged victim refused to cooperate after filing the initial complaint in which she provided Watts’ badge number and an accurate physical description, federal prosecutors said.

However, just a year earlier, department investigators were able to corroborate another episode in which a woman accused Watts of hitting on her while in uniform as she left a grocery store with her child and her mother. He threatened to give her a traffic citation if she didn’t send nude photos of herself to him, she said.

His latest legal problems began in November 2020, when the company that manages AOL.com email accounts flagged the explicit images of children that Watts was sending to his account and reported him to the FBI.

Agents later found at least 12 files sent to the account showing prepubescent children engaged in sexual activity, in some cases with adults, as well as a nude photo of Watts. They discovered additional material after searching Watts’ iPhone.

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When confronted, he immediately confessed and said he’d used the AOL.com account so he wouldn’t have to store the images on his phone or computer and risk his wife finding them.

“Instead of honoring his oath to serve and protect the community, [Watts] engaged with an online community of like-minded child predators, sexually aroused by the rape and exploitation of young children and helped to fuel a market for this horrific material,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kelly M. Harrell wrote in court filings soon after Watts’ arrest last year.

Watts has remained in custody at the Federal Detention Center in Philadelphia ever since.