ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — A former Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission officer accused of possessing child porn in April 2023 is suing the St. Johns County Sheriff's office, Verizon and the University of Florida Child Protection Team after his charges were dropped in late December.
Court documents show three charges of possession of a sexual performance by a child for William Lawshe were dropped on Dec. 27.
Lawshe had been with FWC since 2008 and was recognized as "Officer of the Year" in 2014, as shown in an old FWC Facebook Post.
The lawsuit said Lawshe's career and reputation were destroyed. It alleges Verizon and cloud company Synchronoss Technologies incorrectly identified Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) and distributed Lawshe's private information to other entities.
The images first came from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as an unconfirmed cybertip via an algorithm, the lawsuit said.
However, the lawsuit said the images reported by authorities had a watermark from a website that requires verified ages from models and the consenting model had a verified age over 18.
"These cases raise serious concerns about the use of algorithms and artificial intelligence in the reporting and investigation of alleged cyber-crimes," the lawsuit from firm Nooney, Roberts, Hewett & Nowicki said.
The sheriff's office sought out University of Florida Child Protection Team member, who said the model appeared to be younger than the age of 18 using the Tanner Scale, a clinical scale that measures physical development of children into adolescence. The Tanner Scale was "misapplied" and "not a method of determining a person’s age with any reasonable degree of medical certainty or probability," the lawsuit said.
Additional litigation is anticipated against the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the lawsuit said.
