PANAMA CITY — A former auxiliary officer for the Panama City Beach Police Department was sentenced to a year in the county jail Monday after pleading no contest to charges stemming from sexually explicit communications with young girls.
Justin Jenkins, 21, was fired from the auxiliary program, which employs people with law enforcement training on a part-time basis, and he was arrested in May after he confirmed for PCBPD detectives that he had been sexting with a 13-year-old girl. Jenkins sent the girl photos of his genitals and masturbated during video chat sessions between July and November 2012.
Police identified at least three young girls who had received illegal messages from Jenkins.
Jenkins entered the plea to two counts of felony child abuse and a misdemeanor count of contributing to a child in need of services last month, but he was not sentenced until Monday so his computer could be searched for illegal material.
He was sentenced to one year in the Bay County Jail and nine years of probation. He is not to have contact with any victim, and he can’t have contact with any girl younger than 16 without supervision.