SAN ANTONIO – A San Antonio police officer arrested last month on a possession of child pornography charge admitted to performing sex acts on children as young as three years old, discipline records obtained this week by KSAT Investigates show.
Officer Albert Sanchez, a 16-year veteran of SAPD, was placed on temporary suspension without pay on Jan. 12, a day after his arrest on the felony charge.
The city of San Antonio this week released internal affairs paperwork and search warrant affidavits detailing the allegations Sanchez faces.
SAPD became aware of issues with Sanchez on Jan. 5, after a woman in a relationship with him came forward and said Sanchez admitted that he “slept with” minors as recently as Christmas.
The woman, who has not been identified due to the nature of her allegations, told investigators she began seeing Sanchez after he was placed on leave for an on-duty shooting last year.
The woman showed investigators a text message conversation she had with Sanchez in which he admitted to performing sex acts on minors of varying ages, records show.
KSAT is not including the explicit details from those conversations, due to their sensitive nature.
As SAPD investigators seized Sanchez’s cellphones in early January, he “admitted to communicating about engaging in sexual conduct with minors but stated it was only a fantasy,” a search warrant return states.
A forensic download of Sanchez’s cellphone communications revealed that he described the sex acts in conversations on Nov. 14, Dec. 5 and Dec. 31 and stated he still had pictures from the incidents and “might have recordings,” records show.
A second witness told SAPD that Sanchez, 38, was engaging in “sexting” conversations on multiple cell phones and that when confronted, claimed he was attempting to expose a possible online pedophile, records show.
Investigators searched Sanchez’s work history and could not find an assignment that would require him to use the sexual vocabulary used in his written cellphone conversations, according to records.
Sanchez was arrested days later for possession of child pornography after investigators found multiple explicit pictures of minors on his cellphone, records show.
An attorney for Sanchez did not respond to a text message seeking comment for this story.
Sanchez is also under investigation for aggravated sexual assault of a child, discipline records show.
SAPD officials this week did not respond to multiple emails from KSAT seeking an update on the status of that case.
Sanchez remains free on bond while awaiting indictment, court records show.
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.