Curt Flynn, 40
JUN212022
BY
JOSH WOOD
Two former Louisville police officers pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to violate the rights of Louisville citizens through the arbitrary use of force when they drove around throwing “large beverages” at pedestrians in 2018 and 2019, the Department of Justice said on Tuesday.
According to the DOJ, Bryan Wilson, 36, and Curt Flynn, 40, would go on the police radio and announce “someone was thirsty” or “thirsty fam” before throwing beverages, including their contents, at civilians from their unmarked Louisville Metro Police Department vehicle.
“On many occasions, the civilian was hit with the beverage, and on at least one occasion, a civilian was knocked down to the ground from the impact of being hit with the beverage and the container,” the DOJ said in a press release.
The DOJ said Wilson and Flynn would record the incidents themselves on cell phones. Sometimes, other people in trailing LMPD vehicles would record. The videos, the DOJ said, were shared among members of their unit.
Wilson also pleaded guilty to a cyberstalking charge in a separate case where, according to the DOJ, he “identified computer applications belonging to women and hacked those computer applications and stole compromising photographs, videos and other information.” Wilson, the DOJ said, would then contact the women via text message to try to extort them into giving him more compromising material.
Wilson faces a maximum sentence of 15 years. Flynn faces a maximum sentence of ten years. Sentencing is scheduled in September.
In a statement on Tuesday, LMPD chief Erika Shields said the actions of Flynn and Wilson are “reprehensible, sickening and do not reflect the core values of LMPD.”
She added: “Their behavior was demoralizing and dehumanizing to the victims. On behalf of this agency, I wish to express my sincere apologies to those affected.”
Shields said that Wilson resigned in July 2020 and Flynn resigned today. She said that LMPD’s Professional Standards Unit would conduct an internal investigation to determine “what level of knowledge or involvement anyone else may have had about these incidents.”
In June of last year, LMPD chief Erika Shields told Metro Council members that two officers were under FBI investigation for throwing “slushies” and drinks at people in Louisville’s predominantly Black West End.
“My sense is it will be another black eye to the department, and it’s going to show some very, very poor judgement by a select few individuals on this department,”
she said at the time.
On Tuesday, Shields said she learned of the FBI investigation in May of last year and immediately rescinded Flynn’s police powers “to restrict his interactions with the public” as the investigation continued.
While under FBI investigation, Flynn remained on LMPD’s payroll however; So far this year, he pulled in more than $32,000, according to city records.
In February, a former LMPD officer was sentenced to two years in federal prison for striking a surrendering, kneeling protester in the head with a riot stick in 2020. And in March, former LMPD officer Katie Crews was federally charged with for her use of a pepper ball gun in the moments leading up to West End BBQ chef David McAtee’s June 2020 death.
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Photo by Kathryn Harrington.
NEWS
Feds: Ex Louisville Police Officer Used Law Enforcement Tech To Help Hack Sexually Explicit Photos From Women
OCT122022
BY
JOSH WOOD
A former Louisville Metro Police Department officer used law enforcement technology as part of a scheme that involved hacking the Snapchat accounts of young women and using sexually explicit photos and videos they had taken to extort them, federal prosecutors said in court documents filed on Tuesday.
According to a sentencing memorandum, Bryan Wilson used his law enforcement access to Accurint, a powerful data-combing software used by police departments to assist in investigations, to obtain information about potential victims. He would then share that information with a hacker, who would hack into private Snapchat accounts to obtain sexually explicit photos and videos.
If sexually explicit material was obtained, Wilson would then contact the women, threatening to post the photos and videos online and share them with their friends, family, employer and co-workers unless more sexually explicit material was provided to him.
In June, the DOJ announced that Wilson, 36 at the time, had pleaded guilty to a cyberstalking charge as well as to a charge related to what LMPD has called “Slushygate,” a series of incidents in which Wilson and other officers assaulted pedestrians by throwing beverages out of unmarked patrol vehicles, sometimes filming their exploits.
According to prosecutors, the FBI determined that Wilson was involved in the hacking of 25 accounts and made contact with eight women. While Wilson said another person did the hacking, no hacker is named in federal court documents seen by LEO Weekly.
“I’m curious which picture you’d prefer me to use as the focal point of a collage im making,” Wilson texted one victim alongside photos of her he’d obtained, according to court records.
“You cool with me posting em?” he followed up. “Im telling you, everyone will LOVE them!”
When the victim asked how he got the photos, Wilson said: “I had planned to send your pictures to your parents, brother, grandparents, sisters, friends, facebook, pornhub, employer, etc but I would gladly keep all of this between you and I (and tell you who sent them to me) if you promise to leave me out of the drama and show me a few more pics that way we can both benefit.”
According to the sentencing memorandum, Wilson went ahead and posted some of the women’s photos and videos online and “bragged about his exploits.” Prosecutors wrote he “provided others with his Kik [a messaging app] contact information so they could identify additional potential victims for him to hack, and when the hack was successful Wilson would share the stolen photographs and videos with them.”
Accurint, a product of data brokerage firm LexisNexis Risk Solutions, is advertised to law enforcement agencies as a tool that can quicken investigations and “discover non-obvious connections between people that might not otherwise be known.” Combining databases of public and non-public information, Accurint can provide detailed information about a person, including their phone numbers, relatives and associates, employers and social media profiles associated with their email account.
Federal prosecutors wrote that during text exchanges attempting to extort women, Wilson called the victims “sluts,” “whores” and “bitches.” This, combined with the extortion and the publishing of sexually explicit material online “caused his victims untold psychological trauma,” prosecutors wrote.
At least one of the victims had their sexually explicit photos and videos sent to their employer, which prosecutors said “almost resulted in her termination.”
Prosecutors recommended that Wilson receive “a sentence at the lowest end of the applicable sentencing guidelines” as a result of his guilty plea to both the “Slushygate” charge and the cyberstalking charge.
Former LMPD officer Curt Flynn,
who also pleaded guilty in “Slushygate,” has been recommended to receive three years of probation with a condition that he work in community service.
Wilson faces a maximum of 15 years in prison while Flynn faces a maximum of 10 years.
Both men are scheduled to be sentenced on Oct. 19.
LMPD has said that Flynn resigned in June and Wilson resigned in July of 2020.
Separately,
a current LMPD officer arrested on a state-level “revenge porn” charge on Monday after allegedly sending a sexually explicit photo of a woman to 19 people in a group text message.
A former Louisville Metro Police Department officer used law enforcement technology as part of a scheme that involved hacking the Snapchat accounts of young women...
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