Most police caught with email porn 'will keep jobs'

Most of the police officers caught with email pornography on their computers can expect to keep their jobs and have the incident wiped from their personal records after a year, a top police executive says.

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 staff member's personal 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 now an amnesty for staff to remove other inappropriate material not picked up in the audit of police computers late last year.

Earlier today Mr Hastings said he had so far only seen 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," he told National Radio.

He said the other two he had seen were R18, and although sexually explicit "had elements of humour in them".

He said he understood police would eventually forward about 30 images to him in total.

- NZPA