Crockett | DNSO

A member of a prominent Smith River farming family faces charges of distributing and possessing child pornography after police seized a cell phone and a laptop during a consent search of his home on Sunday.

Ryan Crockett, 31, allegedly admitted to downloading and sharing several dozen videos, according to Crescent City Police Chief Richard Griffin. Officers were alerted to two videos from the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, Griffin told the Wild Rivers Outpost on Monday.

“The social media platform self reports to the ICAC Task Force and it’s up to us to serve the search warrant on who the IP address belongs to,” Griffin said. “Those are two videos that we caught and now we’ve seized electronic devices to try and figure out if there are more than were caught.”

Acting on a search warrant, officers contacted Crockett on the 800 block of Fred Haight Drive in Smith River where he was visiting family on Sunday. The warrant gave CCPD permission to search Crockett’s person as well as his former home on the 100 block of Reynolds Lane, which is near the Dr. Fine Bridge, Griffin said.

According to Griffin, Crockett gave permission to officers to search his new residence on the 4600 block of Kings Valley Road.

Officers contacted Crockett at about 2:30 p.m. and concluded the search of his home after 7 p.m. Sunday, according to Griffin.

Acknowledging that both Crockett’s Kings Valley Road home and his former residence on Reynolds Lane are outside Crescent City limits, Griffin said CCPD has an agreement with the sheriff to handle ICAC cases even if they’re outside their jurisdiction.

Del Norte County Sheriff Garrett Scott has granted CCPD full peace officer status in the county’s jurisdiction. He said Griffin reached out to him shortly after he took office about CCPD’s work with ICAC.

“It was something Chief Griffin was very passionate about and he offered to do any cases that might come our way in the county and the city just to help out since they were a member of that coalition,” Scott said. “I do have two detectives that do work on sexual assaults and those kinds of crimes, but this particular Internet crime is something (CCPD) is able to do. Why not use that resource? I think they do an outstanding job of it.”

Crockett is Facebook friends with Scott, which the sheriff acknowledged. Scott said he knows Crockett, but he’s not personal friends with him. The sheriff added that his relationship with Crockett doesn’t have anything to do with CCPD taking the case for him.

Griffin noted that the Crockett family, which owns 1,000 acres of Easter lily fields and pasture land on Fred Haight Drive, has a lot of connections to the Smith River community.

Ryan Crockett was booked into the Del Norte County Jail on charges of possessing obscene material involving a child under 14. He’s currently being held without bail.

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