A Southern California police detective who’d once been named “detective of the year” allegedly sent graphic messages online to a decoy pretending to be a 14-year-old girl, prosecutors said.

Santa Ana police detective Gregory Beaumarchais, 43, was charged with one misdemeanor count of annoying or molesting a victim believed to be under 18, the Orange County District Attorney’s office said in a news release. He allegedly sent some of the messages while on duty.

A civilian decoy notified Orange County Crime Stoppers that a person claiming to be a 45-year-old police officer had sent them inappropriate messages in December of 2021 and January of 2022, the district attorney’s office said.

“It is beyond disturbing that a sworn police officer would engage in inappropriate conversations with someone he believed to be a child,” Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. “Our children should not have to worry about being preyed upon by the very people we teach them who are there to protect them.”

According to a tweet from the Santa Ana Police Department posted in May of 2021, Beaumarchais was named the department’s 2019 “detective of the year.” He had been with the department since 2011, and he was put on administrative leave in December 2021 after the department became aware of the allegations.

“Our Department will not tolerate inappropriate behavior or alleged criminal conduct that infringes on the trust provided by the community we are hired to serve,” Santa Ana Police Chief David Valentin said in a news release.

Beaumarchais faces up to a year in jail and would have to register as a sex offender if convicted. He turned himself in Tuesday. It was not immediately clear whether he had an attorney.