A northern Alberta peace officer has been spared time behind bars after admitting to amassing a collection of child sex abuse images. Photo by David Bloom /Postmedia

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A northern Alberta peace officer has been spared time behind bars after admitting to amassing a collection of child sex abuse images.

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Daniel Emond, 35, pleaded guilty Monday to a count of possessing child pornography during his time as a peace officer for the City of Grande Prairie. Emond was arrested in 2023 after a social media app reported an upload of images depicting girls being sexually abused from one of his devices. A search ultimately turned up 254 images and 98 videos depicting girls as young as nine years old being raped.

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Court of King’s Bench Justice Maureen McGuire accepted a joint submission from the Crown and defence recommending Emond be given a two-year conditional sentence order to be served on house arrest, followed by a year of probation. 

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McGuire said such sentences are rare in cases involving child sex abuse material. However, she found Emond posed a low risk to the community given the steps he took to seek counselling shortly after his arrest.

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“This is a serious offence, and because of that it’s not one where commonly a conditional sentence would be appropriate,” she said. “But these are exceptional circumstances.” 

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Emond was arrested in September 2023 after an investigation by the Alberta Law Enforcement Response Team (ALERT). He came to police attention when the messaging app Kik reported an upload of child sex abuse images to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which alerted Canadian law enforcement.

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Police ultimately searched Emond’s home in Grande Prairie and seized five devices, one of which contained the offending images. During a police interview, Emond told investigators he viewed the files but deleted anything depicting young children. When confronted with the fact the files nonetheless contained many such images, Emond said he “fantasized about them as 18 year olds,” prosecutor Ashley Antonio told court.

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Defence lawyer Ellen Sutherland said her client obtained the images as part of a bulk download at a time when he was pursuing “riskier and riskier materials.” Emond lost his job in the wake of the charges, and he and his family had to move to High Prairie to escape the public backlash.

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Emond has subsequently been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, which is characterized by “rigid, rule-oriented” behaviour, said Sutherland. Accessing child sex abuse material “was a coping mechanism for that disorder.”

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Emond planned to plead guilty sooner but negotiations with the Crown took several months, Sutherland added, noting Emond would have faced “significant risk to his safety” in prison given his past in law enforcement.

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McGuire accepted Emond’s guilty plea and the joint submission, crediting him for seeking out treatment as soon as possible. 

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“That is something that takes a significant amount of character to do when you’re in the position that you are in,” she told the accused.

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The court also imposed a DNA order and a requirement Emond register as a sex offender for 20 years.