BELFAST – A city man was arrested on a child pornography charge after police concluded that he had downloaded explicit materials onto his computer.

Jesse Brown, 23, of Belfast was arrested at his home on Wednesday by Detective Michael McFadden following a brief investigation.

He was charged with felony possession of sexually explicit material and taken to the Waldo County Jail. Brown was being held on $20,000 cash bail.

McFadden said police were alerted of Brown by an FBI agent working out of Augusta. The agent advised McFadden that Brown’s Internet address had been recovered from a computer seized by the FBI in New York in a separate child pornography investigation.

The search in New York revealed that Brown had downloaded child pornography files from that computer to his computer.

McFadden said that when he and Detective Glen Lang, of the state police’s computer crimes task force, went to Brown’s apartment on Tuesday and informed him what they were looking for, Brown allowed them to look at his computer.

When they found evidence of pornography, the detectives secured the residence and returned with a search warrant. The search revealed that Brown had “thousands” of computer files containing images of young girls and boys in sexual situations, McFadden said.

McFadden said Brown told him he had spent the past six years in his bedroom with his computers.

He said Brown’s bedroom was crammed with computer equipment, including eight hard drives that authorities are currently reviewing for additional evidence. One unit alone had 16,000 explicit images, he said. McFadden said Brown cooperated with police from the moment they approached him.

“He was very cooperative,” McFadden said Thursday. “He confessed to the whole thing.”