According to king5 news here in Seattle, some port of Seattle police officers received or sent or forwarded on some porn or “racist” emails (the “racist” email they used as an example was a video (probably a link to a video) of some guy picking up some Hispanic day laborers, and instead of taking them to a job, drove them to an INS office). According to the King 5 investigators,
Over a two-year period, 32 officers either received, saved, or passed on more than 175 inappropriate e-mails.
Lets do a little math for the king5 team: Over 730 days (we have to assume port of seattle cops work 24/7, at least one guy has to be on duty!), 32 people sent or recieved or saved 175 emails. If one cop sent the mail to another cop and he saved it, is that counted once or twice or 3 times? (and how do you define “saved”? they didn’t delete it?) If you only count it once, that’s still only one “inappropriate email” every 4 days. For 32 officers combined. My gmail account gets at least 5 times that much inappropriate mail just as spam. I probably get that amount myself in forwards from family and friends. Combine that with 32 people i know? You’d end up with 10-100 times as much inappropriate email as these cops had. i could send one offensive joke email to 32 people at king5.com and at least one of them would forward it. But now they’ve all “sent or received or passed on” an offensive email. Watch comedy central for an hour, especially Chapelle show or Mind of Mencia and you’ll see a dozen racist, sexist, or inappropriate things. Heck, if 32 people watch King 5 (NBC) for 2 years, and i bet they would find at least 175 things they think are offensive in some way.
Don’t get me wrong, these officers should not have been sending them from work. Forwarding them too, with one notable exception: when i get email at work with a link or attachment from someone i do trust, i still don’t open them at work unless i am absolutely certain they are not inappropriate in any way. if i don’t know what it is, i forward it to my personal email account and delete the one on my work email. So now I’ve received AND sent inappropriate email. So i have no problem with punishing people who were sending offensive emails during work hours. They port of Seattle police probably have rules/codes of conduct/acceptable use policies against this kind of thing, so they should be punished.
What’s even funnier is that they are calling this scandal “E-gate”. come on.
“This is a sad commentary,” said Deputy Chief Gale Evans.
Yes, this is a sad commentary. On the king 5 investigators! This would have been newsworthy in 1997. Porn and inappropriate emails on the innerweb in 2007! oh noes! Calling it “E-gate”? ick.
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