Retired Tampa police officer sentenced to more than a century in prison after child porn conviction

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17-05-2025

The Brief
A former Tampa police officer will spend the rest of his life behind bars after he was handed a lengthy prison sentence on Friday.
It comes after he was convicted earlier this year on 100 counts of possessing child pornography.
He was working as a reserve officer with TPD when more than 100 images of child pornography were found on his devices.
TAMPA, Fla. - A former Tampa police officer was sentenced to more than a century in prison.
On Friday, Paul Mumford was sentenced to 111 years in prison, after being convicted earlier this year of 100 counts of possession of child pornography. Mumford worked for the Tampa Police Department from 1986 to 2015, when he retired as a Sergeant. He returned shortly after as a reserve officer.
RELATED: Retired Tampa police officer arrested on 100 counts of child pornography, TPD chief says
The backstory
A tip in 2021 led investigators to search Mumford's devices. In 2022, they also searched his home and found more than 100 images of child pornography on his devices.
"There are at least 162 identified, exploited children that were located in the images on his device," a prosecutor with the 13th Judicial Circuit said.
At the time of his arrest, TPD confirmed that Mumford worked on the department's sex crimes unit from 2008-2009. On Friday, the state pointed to other evidence that was revealed during Mumford's trial earlier this year.
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"Also in his possession were numerous stories that did come out during the course of the trial that confirmed Mr. Mumford's wants, desires and, quite frankly, his like and interest in the child pornography that was located on his devices," the prosecutor said.
The other side
However, Mumford's attorney argued that this was all one incident, as opposed to many different incidents.
"It is one criminal act of pointing and clicking and downloading a series of files," Mumford's attorney said.
His attorney argued that the sentencing guidelines are disproportionate and incredibly harsh for the conduct that he was convicted of.
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"These files were, whomever deleted them, were deleted in a 26-second period within the first six hours of the charging information, so to say that there is some evidence of multiple downloads or multiple images is contrary to the evidence that their expert agreed to," Mumford's attorney said.
Mumford's attorney also pointed out that Mumford has no prior criminal record and has a record of service to the community. The prosecutor pointed to data shown during the trial, that there were multiple access dates and modify dates recorded on the device.
What they're saying
"There was no evidence that this was a one-time click," the prosecutor said. "There was no evidence that Mr. Mumford simply got onto Google, searched for "child pornography" and then, all of a sudden, all of these images magically appeared on his devices."
When the judge sentenced Mumford, he shared some remarks of his own.
"This was not just an accidental click on Google where these child pornography pictures showed up," Judge Robin Fuson said. "One does not find child pornography accidentally."
The Source
The information in this story was gathered by FOX 13's Kylie Jones.
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