Good News, Pedophiles: FSPD Reserve Officer Can Help You Beat Child Porn Charges!

The blockheaded fellow to the left is Alvey Matlock.

He wears a number of hats, though (admittedly) not in that photo.[foot]Because he wouldn’t want to mess up that sweet ‘do.[/foot]  Most of the time, he is the Fort Smith Police Department’s resident computer nerd IT specialist, where, among other things, it falls to him to locate and preserve potential evidence on the FSPD computers.

He is also a reserve police officer in the FSPD, which means that he’s gone through some amount of police training and, at times, actually gets to function as a real police officer.  For a tech geek IT specialist, that must be like how a corgi feels when someone dresses it up as a dragon for Halloween.

But that’s only part of the story. Alvey also has a third gig that is . . . interesting.  He owns and operates a computer forensics consulting company, Guardian Forensics & Data Recovery, LLC.  The interesting thing about Guardian, however, is what it offers.  Specifically, this:

 Guardian provides forensics services for Attorneys, Law firms, corporate, private, public sector, and individuals. Our consultants are experts at gathering, analyzing, and uncovering any type of digital evidence from all types of documents, Internet history, computer log files and email.

-Criminal Cases -Civil Litigation

-Expert Witness & Testimony -Digital Evidence Acquisition

-Picture & Video File Review -Cell Phone Forensics 

-Internet History Reconstruction -Computer Timeline Analysis

-Keyword Searching -Password & Data Recovery

-Metadata Extraction/Analysis -Fraud

-Email & Chat Recovery/Analysis  -Live Host & RAM Analysis

-Social media Forensics -Murders

-Child Pornography -Email investigations

-Divorce -Employee misconduct

-wrongful death  -intellectual property

-software infringement – Corporate Internal Investigations



-Theft of Intellectual Property
  -Mass Deletions & System Wiping

-Social Media Forensics

Does anyone else see something odd there (beyond Alvey’s near-sociopathic use of various font faces, colors, and capitalization)?  No?  Well, maybe if we include this, it will become more clear:

Alvey has been employed with the Fort Smith Police Department since 2006 as their Network Manager, overseeing and supporting Public Safety technology, which includes the 911 Communications Center and Regional Mobile Data. He also serves as a member of the Cyber Investigations unit, working numerous digital forensic cases involving peer-to-peer, child pornography, financial crimes, narcotics and theft for several local, state and federal agencies.  Alvey is a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force and also participates as a reserve office [sic] the Fort Smith Police Department.

Yup.  A guy who is employed by the FSPD and receives ongoing training in law-enforcement-related computer forensics, is running a side business where he specifically advertises that he can help the defense in criminal cases, including child pornography and murder.  More to the point, a person who is employed by the FSPD serves as a member of the Internet Crimes Against Children task force is specifically telling people charged with Internet crimes against children that he can help their defense. And, given that the FSPD website specifically brags about how their Cyber Investigations Unit works with the Center for Missing & Exploited Children, I wonder how the Center would feel about Alvey’s side-job helping people who are accused of exploiting children?[foot]Don’t worry — we should have an answer to this last question fairly soon, as I’ve emailed the Center to ask about it.[/foot]

Paging Dr. O’Interest.  Dr. Conflict O’Interest….

Oooh, look.  There’s even a part where he suggests that the police might be setting people up for child porn charges!

Been accused of some pretty nasty things on your computer? Guardian Forensics works with Criminal Defense attorneys to provide a second opinion to what the police offer as digital evidence. Do you think you’ve been set up? That what the police claim on your computer isn’t true? That a virus planted the evidence? That someone else was using your computer? We can provide expert witness testimony in court about these things and examine your computer without the attitude that you’re already guilty.

• Review and comment on any search warrant, affidavit to support search warrants, witness statements, indictment and police reports, and court transcripts of the prosecutions pre-trial testimony of the evidence.

• Review the methods used by Law Enforcement in the collection, acquisition, handling, analysis, and preservation of evidence to ensure it is within accepted practices and the Law Enforcement Department’s Forensics Lab Standard Operating Procedures.

• Provide Expert Witness testimony in court and depositions, as well as creating exhibits to support testimony in court.

• Examine time stamps to provide doubt that you were at the computer at the time of the occurrence and that it could have been someone else at the computer (Child Pornography, Hacking, Financial Crimes…)

• Create a profile of your normal computer use habits and compare it to the time of the occurrence to provide doubt it was you and could have been someone else. (Child Pornography, Hacking…)

• Malware Analysis to see if it is possible that a virus could have been the source of the illegal content (Child Pornography, Torrented or Illegally Downloaded Media…)

We will look at your whole computer and put that piece of evidence in context to help you. Contact us today and tell your attorney so that we can get started on your case today.

You might be wondering, isn’t it improper for a police officer — even a reserve officer/civilian employee — to run a business that presents such an absurdly obvious conflict of interest with his police duties?

Yes.  Yes, it is.

FSPD Rule 421 states explicitly:

Officers are prohibited from participating in any other vocation or business activity which might conflict or interfere with their responsibilities to the Department. Officers must receive permission from the Office of the Chief of Police before engaging in off-duty employment or business activities.

Then, Rules 507 and 508 state:

Except for official police duties, no officer shall knowingly align or associate themselves with persons whose criminal convictions or activities create a potential damage to the officer’s credibility. This does not exclude an officer from associating with immediate members of his/her family if they fall within the aforementioned category.

Officers shall not permit their name or photograph to be used to endorse any product or service which is in any way connected with law enforcement without permission from the Office of the Chief of Police. Officers shall not, without permission from the Office of the Chief of Police, allow their name or photograph to be used in any commercial testimonial or endorsement which alludes to their position or employment with the Department.

It doesn’t get any better if you consider Alvey a city employee, rather than a police officer, either.  Rule III(L) of the Fort Smith City Employee Handbook states:

Holding a second job or conducting a business activity while employed by the City may be permissible with the prior approval of the department director and the Director of Human Resources.  However, employment with the City must be primary, and any secondary employment or business activity must not be in a business area, trade, occupation or profession which would interfere with the employee’s City job duties, working or hours or would represent a conflict of interest.

But, hey…I got my start in criminal defense.  On some level, maybe I can find a way to justify what he is doing; I mean, it’s not like he’s doing this job Monday through Friday, 8am to 6pm, where it might directly conflict with his FSPD schedule and duties, right?

Oh.  Well…that’s a problem.  Though, perhaps predictably, it’s not even the most problematic piece of information on that picture.  Nope, that award would have to go to the address that’s listed: 100 S. 10th St., Fort Smith, AR 72901.

AKA, this building:

How can Alvey’s Dork Inc. Guardian Forensics be located at the Fort Smith Police Department and conduct business from 8am to 6pm, M-F?  Well, while I eagerly await an “explanation” from Sgt. Daniel Grubbs or some other sycophant about how Alvey’s business doesn’t actually operate at the time and place that Alvey put on his own Google+ page, I have a theory.  Alvey is running his “side” business as part and parcel of doing his actual City/FSPD job.

Which makes sense, really; running the business out of the PD means that Alvey can use all those great programs and hardware devices that the PD has purchased for police business, which makes his ability to recover his customers’ deleted emails and deleted documents much easier.[foot]Theoretically, I mean.  Lord knows, there are all sorts of poor decisions and lack of ability that can prevent successful recovery in practice.[/foot]  Is it disconcerting to think that the same guy who might be helping the FSPD build a child-porn case against one suspect is using the same training and (I assume) equipment and office space to help some other person build a defense against identical charges?  It is to me, but, then, I’m not the kind of person who just turns a blind eye to obviously egregious behavior in order to better justify my own failings as a leader.

Of course, the people of Fort Smith are very fond of their municipal leaders these days, and they are not at all distrusting of things that don’t pass the smell test.  So, I’m sure no one in Fort Smith would object to Alvey Matlock making some extra money for himself, while on the City dime, by using the latest in forensic computer training and equipment, all of which was paid for by the taxpayers.  Right?