Former SWAT Officer Sentenced To Prison For Producing, Possessing Child Porn: Official

HARFORD COUNTY, MD — A former Baltimore Police SWAT officer has been sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for sexual exploitation of a child to produce child pornography and possession of child pornography. It also was discovered by officials that the former officer sexually abused a minor and demanded that the victim engage in sex acts with him.

Donald Hildebrandt, 52, of Bel Air also will have lifetime supervised released after he serves his sentence.

According to his plea agreement, between 2018 and 2020, Hildebrandt purchased at least three spy cameras, which he hid in a shared bathroom in his home to secretly record minors showering and using the bathroom. Hundreds of videos of minors in various stages of undress were made and the minors who were recorded were between the ages of three and 16, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.

At least 10 children were recorded in videos taken in the bathroom and dozens of videos were produced that depicted children with exposed genitals, including at least five minors, four of whom were under 12 years of age, court documents revealed.

As detailed in the plea agreement, Hildebrandt placed the cameras slightly above the seat of the toilet and at other location at a height designed to capture the victims’ genitals while getting in and out of the shower, and while using the toilet. In order to record as many victims as possible, visitors were instructed to change clothes only in the bathroom and not in the bedrooms.

The images recorded in the videos were located on Hildebrandt’s computer, which was seized during a search on Oct. 20, 2021. Additional images depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct were found on other electronic media seized during the search.

One day prior to the execution of the search warrant, Hildebrandt was notified that he was the subject of a child exploitation investigation, through a witness and when he was contacted by a member of Child Protective Services. Sometime after that, but before the execution of the search warrant, Hildebrandt admitted that he performed a factory reset of his tablet. Investigators also did not locate any spy cameras in the residence, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maryland.