Cop Sends Sexually Explicit Messages To Teen, Tries To Lure Him To Nude Beach

A police officer was apprehended in Florida for sending sexually explicit messages to a teenager and trying to lure him to a nude beach for sexual favors. The 15-year-old boy's father found out about the messages and alerted authorities, eventually leading to the cop's arrest.

Juan Antonio Garcia, 30, who joined the Sewall's Point Police Department five years ago, was charged with attempting to produce pornography with a teenage boy. He appeared in United States Magistrate Court in Fort Pierce on Friday to face the federal charge, according to New York Post.

Garcia knew the boy for about five years before starting to have sexually explicit conversations with him. The police officer was also a family friend from years ago, and his nephew was in Boy Scouts with the boy, the victim's father said. The boy also began working in Garcia's taco truck five months ago.

"My son wasn't going to work with him on his taco truck, which I thought was odd because he loved it," the father told WPTV. "Then he started trying to set up times to take my son out to eat just to mentor him and my son wasn't going with him. He would say he was and then at the last minute he would cancel."

The father went through the boy's phone one night and was alarmed to see the text messages from Garcia.

It is alleged that Garcia instructed the boy via text message to produce sexually explicit materials and send them to him, the news release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Florida indicated.

The officer also tried to entice the boy into going to a nude beach with him.

"Want to experiment?" one of the cop's messages to the boy read, according to the federal criminal complaint against him.

After going through the conversations between Garcia and his son, the boy's father informed law enforcement authorities and handed the device over to them.

The next time Garcia sent a text to the boy's phone, it was a detective posing as the teenager who responded.

The detective was up with Garcia "until 1:30 in the morning texting as if he were my son, and he sent him multiple nude photos and arranged to come over to the neighborhood park," the father told WPTV.

Garcia agreed to meet with the minor for oral sex at a local park on Nov. 23. Law enforcement officers arrested him upon arrival, reported WPBF 25 News. The officer was apprehended and charged in connection with trying to sexually exploit the teenage boy.

The accused police officer was suspended from the Sewall's Point police force without pay after the allegations came to light. His detention hearing is set for Dec. 10 while his arraignment is set for Dec. 17. He could face a sentence of 15 to 30 years behind bars if convicted.