The six Hawke's Bay police officers caught up in a swoop on checking for e-mail pornography on their computers can expect to keep their jobs, a top police executive has said. They would also likely have the incident wiped from their personal records after a year.
Last month police revealed that
328 staff had been caught with 5000 inappropriate images on their computers. In the case of 30 staff, the images were of sufficiently objectionable content to warrant criminal investigation. Chief Censor Bill Hastings is still deciding which of the worst images break the law.
However, Deputy Commissioner Lyn Provost told police magazine Ten-One that for those not facing a criminal investigation, police would take a "common-sense" approach. Those staff would have to accept the material was inappropriate, attend a one-day workshop and sign a document that they accepted police policy on the issue.
The incident would be noted on a staffer's record, but if there was no repeat behaviour within a year they would face no further action and the note would be removed. She said there was an amnesty for staff to remove other inappropriate material not picked up in the audit of police computers late last year.
Earlier yesterday, Mr Hastings said he had so far seen only three of the potentially objectionable images, one of which he had deemed objectionable: "It tended to promote or support the use of urine in association with sexual conduct, which meets one of the (legal) criteria".
