LONGVIEW, Texas — At Thursday's city council meeting in Longview, the police chief gave a statement in regards to a former lieutenant who was recently arrested by the FBI.
Seth Estes Vanover, 50, of Diana, was booked into the Smith County Jail on a federal detainer Wednesday and later released to another agency the next day, according to online records.
Longview police said on Tuesday, the FBI contacted the police department regarding an investigation involving one of the department’s officers.
The LPD said in a Facebook post the FBI arrested the employee, who was just identified as a "peace officer," at the police department with assistance from this agency. The officer resigned from LPD.
According to reporting from the Longview News-Journal, conservations on social media between a man, who was later identified as Vanover, and two undercover FBI agents are detailed in a 52-page complaint filed in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas.
According to the document obtained by our news partners, the man was looking for sex with girls, and the conversations show the social media user accessed the app on devices registered to the city of Longview.
"Such a criminal accusation of this, sickens me," said Longview Police Dept. Chief Anthony Boone. "I hate it for our employees in our police department, and I hate it for our community. And we're not going to tolerate crimes especially in our walls in our police department. And we're going to continue to cooperate with our FBI partners in this investigation."
In council business, the Longview Museum of Fine Art filed an application to request the National Bank, located south of the county courthouse, be recognized as a local historic landmark. The motion was passed by the city council.
"We have a local historic landmark program to help preserve some of our history and our council just adopted our 11 local landmark," said City of Longview spokesperson Richard Yeakley. "And since there's only 11, it's always exciting when we get to do this. It's not something we get to do every day. So it had gone through the historic preservation commission, had gone through the Planning and Zoning Commission. And now it's been approved by the city council. So it's an exciting day."
During the meeting, Mayor Andy Mack honored the 175th anniversary of Pine Tree ISD, recognized Domestic Violence Awareness Day and designated Oct. 9 to 15 as Fire Prevention Week in Longview.
To read the rest of the meeting's agenda, click here.