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By John Nolte
Darrin Bell, a multiple award-winning, left-wing cartoonist, was arrested Wednesday in Sacramento County for allegedly holding videos of child pornography on his computer.
Authorities claim a search at Bell’s homes turned up “134 videos of child pornography linked to an account owned and controlled by Bell,” reports the local NBC station. In addition, investigators claim they found “computer generated/artificial intelligence child pornography.”
Bell is currently in prison with bail set at $1 million and is expected to appear before a judge Friday.
Per the report, the authorities were tipped off by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Bell won a Pulitzer for his editorial cartooning in 2019, the first black man to do so, and is syndicated by King Features.
(L-R) Makeda Rashidi and Darrin Bell attend the NAACP Image Awards Nominees Brunch at Fairmont Century Plaza on February 25, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Leon Bennett/Getty for NAACP)
Bell, a 49-year-old graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, has seen his work appear in the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, the Oakland Tribune, and syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. He also won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Graphic Novel.
The press release from the Sacramento Valley Internet Crimes Against Children Detectives (ICAC) offers more details.
The ICAC “conducted an investigation stemming from a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) related to someone uploading Child Sex Abuse Material (CSAM), also referred to as child pornography.”
“The tip was related to 18 files containing CSAM,” the announcement adds. “The investigation continued, and a total of 134 videos of CSAM were located and linked to the same account, owned and controlled by 49-year-old Darrin Bell.”
“Yesterday morning (January 15), ICAC Detectives served a residential search warrant at Bell’s home. Detectives recovered evidence related to the case, as well as computer-generated/AI CSAM.”
The news has revived a couple of his previous cartoons attacking those who criticize the grooming of small children:
Yikes pic.twitter.com/rw9CH88Zvn
— PhotographicFloridian (@JackLinFLL) January 16, 2025
Should Bell plead guilty or find himself convicted, we can all look forward to “this didn’t age well” memes.
Allegations aside, Bell’s work is what you’d expect from someone with his history: lacking in wit, the opposite of clever, and stridently and mind-numbingly pedantic.
