Former SPD officer, OTC guard sentenced for child porn

A retired Springfield Police Department officer was sentenced to four years in federal prison without parole for possessing child pornography.

Steven Magruder, 60, was sentenced yesterday by U.S. District Judge M. Douglas Harpool, with a separate order to pay restitution to one of his victims, according to a release from the office of Tammy Dickson, United States Attorney for the Western District of Missouri. He pleaded guilty to the crime last October.

According to the release, Magruder retired as a corporal from the Springfield Police Department in 2005. He worked part-time from 2006-14 as a security officer for Ozarks Technical Community College in Springfield and as a bailiff for the Greene County Circuit Court in 2013.
 
The charges stem from January 2013, when a detective with the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department identified Magruder’s computer as sharing child pornography over the Internet. According to the release, the detective downloaded 12 videos Magruder was sharing via a peer-to-peer file-sharing program during a 42-day period in January and February 2013.

Following a forensic analysis, investigators found Magruder had collected the pornographic material for at least a year.
 
This case was part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. It was investigated by the FBI, the Southwest Missouri Cyber Crime Task Force, the Jasper County Sheriff’s Department and the Springfield Police Department.[[In-content Ad]]