Grady Judd (YouTube: Polk County Sheriff’s Office) and Edgardo Acevedo Cancela (Polk County Jail)
A county sheriff in Florida and one of his deputies are being sued by a father alleging he was arrested — and had his face broadcast across social media platforms — after being charged with possession and distribution of child pornography based solely on a cellphone number that had not been used in more than two years.
In a complaint filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Edgardo Acevedo Cancela accused Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd and Deputy Sean Jones of false arrest and malicious prosecution. He also claimed that Jones lied under oath about the data authorities obtained from his cellphone before the charges were dropped.
The complaint further asserts the only reason Jones arrested Cancela was because the deputy was angry that after Cancela was placed under arrest and asked for the code to unlock his cellphone, he asked to speak to his lawyer rather than immediately obeying the request.
“Defendant, Deputy Jones, a government employee (Deputy Sheriff of Polk County, Florida) wrote down false and misleading statements about the Plaintiff, a — private citizen,” the complaint states. “He did so knowing that his statements were false and that they would lead to the arrest and prosecution of a married man with children for the most heinous of crimes, child pornography and that the false accusations would be made public. He published these falsities to the public and the world at large when he filed it in the public record on May 22, 2020.”
The suit claims there was “no evidence of child pornography found by investigators” at any point that gave weight to the claims brought by authorities.
Even after his release from detention, Cancela was prohibited by court order from staying in the same home as his family or even seeing them in person and was ostracized by the community following his highly publicized arrest as part of the sheriff’s office’s “Operation Guardians of Innocence V,” the complaint states. The purpose of the operation was to track down individuals who had been trafficking in child sexual abuse material.
Court documents filed against Cancela indicated that the children depicted in the child sexual abuse material allegedly found on Cancela’s electronic device were about the same ages as his 10 and 13-year-old children, insinuating that his children may have been the subjects of the material despite authorities having already reviewed the photos and videos and knowing that was not the case.
At the close of the investigation, no illegal material was found on any of the devices seized from Cancela’s home. The complaint states that the basis for targeting them was a phone number, which the couple “abandoned” when they moved from Puerto Rico to Florida in February 2018.
“[Deputy Jones] had done no investigation into what person had actually been using that phone and phone number when the alleged offenses occurred in October 2019,” the complaint says.
In a 2020 press conference, Sheriff Judd referred to Cancela as “a deviant” and called him “dangerous,” which the complaint says constitutes defamation because the sheriff made “the lies all the more public with his press conferences and public pronouncements.”
“In fact, Sheriff Judd did publicly brag about his Operation’s success, including the names and addresses of the arrestees (including Plaintiff, Mr. Acevedo Cancela) and holding press conferences covered by local media,” the complaint states.
Even after the state dropped all the charges against Cancela, the state’s attorney in court documents wrote that prosecutors “determined that the charge cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Cancela lost his job as a nurse following his arrest and suffered “severe emotional distress and humiliation” as his allegedly unwarranted prosecution went on for more than two years, the complaint states.
Cancela is seeking undetermined damages in the case.
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