1,300 Porn Images Found On Sheriff Employee's Computer

An undercover sting inside the Orange County sheriff's headquarters found a department employee had more than 1,300 images of porn on his work computer.

IMAGES: Video Allegedly Shows Employee Viewing Porn

Eyewitness News found out he's the son of a sheriff's office commander who was trying to develop a career in law enforcement and this wasn't the first time he broke department rules.

At first, deputies said, Thomas Cockriel actually denied loading his county computer with smut. But when confronted with evidence of the 1,324 images they'd found, he turned in his notice.

Email News Sign-Up Multiple Choices - Auto sign-up (LEFT ALIGN) GET WFTV NEWS HEADLINES BY EMAIL 9 a.m. Headlines Noon Headlines 4 p.m. Headlines News of the Strange Breaking News Alerts Deputies said what Cockriel was doing with his taxpayer-owned computer could have cost him his job if he hadn't quit first.

"We take these kind of things very, very seriously," said Capt. Mark Strobridge, Orange County Sheriff's Office.

It was routine maintenance of the sheriff's computer system that did Cockriel in. Someone in the IT department found hundreds of pornographic images on Cockriel's personal space on the network.

But agents wanted to be sure he was the one enjoying the porn, so they set up cameras that caught, from two different angles, the 25-year-old supply clerk engaged in a sex act in a glassed-in office he shared with two other people.

"We were all deeply disappointed in his activity and behavior," Strobridge said.

It wasn't the first time Cockriel had been in hot water at the sheriff's office. He was disciplined four times in four years, once for looking at porn on the web, and that's why he was turned down twice when he applied for a job not as a civilian employee but as a sworn deputy sheriff.

"Years down the road he could apply somewhere else. He certainly would not have the opportunity to apply here at the Orange County Sheriff's Office," Strobridge said.

While Cockriel wasn't a sworn officer, the sheriff's office said it holds all its employees to a higher standard.

Eyewitness News tried to find Cockriel on Monday but wasn't able to track him down.