The Snowball Effect
By Jocelyn Geboy in News on Dec 20, 2006 3:51PM
You know how it goes. It starts off buying a Christmas present online during your lunch hour, then you remember that you haven't gotten your lovah anything. Then you think about something you'd like to see them in. Then you think maybe you don't want to see them in anything. Then why bother waiting until home, why not just check out some naked people RIGHT NOW? IS that how it goes? We don't know, because we don't look at porn at work!!
We don't know *how* many of these stories we read. Person gets fired for downloading porn at work when Judy/Joey receptionist opens up the browser and there's a bunch of crazy porn there. On the desktop. In the recent history. Full-on videos. Maybe when it was all new and people didn't understand the internet. But for the love of all that's dirty and raunchy, stop downloading porn at work in the aughts!
People never learn, though. And the Wilmington police department is currently filled with lots of good-time drama that all started with a little internet porn. From the get-go, the story is convoluted. Police dispatcher Kathy Shea turns on her computer one day to find a ton of gay porn. She reports the incident, and while the department can't really identify exactly who the culprit was, three things come of it: they crack down and institute strict computer policies/passwords, one officer (Ragsdale) tries to pin it on another officer (repeatedly noted in the article as being Hispanic (??)), and somehow Kathy ends up getting punished for mentioning the incident to a sheriff's deputy and wondering why there was no punishment given.
Following this, Kathy quits and files a complaint with the EEOC, and then there is a "prank" involving a newspaper picture with a caption written on it that implicitly insinuates that the Hispanic officer* is a pedophile. There are suspensions around the "poster incident." Ragsdale is charged with lying about the whole thing. However, he is subsequently cleared of the charge by the Wilmington Board of Police and Fire Commissioners.
Yet, he can't stay out of trouble. The thing that eventually gets him canned is "driving 30 mph over the speed limit in his squad car on the way to a routine assignment and disobeying a sergeant's order," but he also is called out by the board for being seen sleeping in his squad car while he was supposed to be on patrol, hitting a deer with his squad car, backing his car into tree, and admitting that he called the Hispanic officer a "faggot" in a confrontation in the police station parking lot after Ragsdale was fired. Sounds like Ragsdale has some 'splainin' to do!
The police commission finally fired the dude in May, but now it turns out they may have been in the wrong because only the police board can fire an officer. Official charges were brought against Ragsdale in October, but now he's filed a suit against Will County, despite the fact that he has a new job in loss prevention with Menards. We have no idea what the hell is going on in Wilmington. All we know is this all seemed to have started with some porn on the work computers, and now it sounds like an episode of "Reno 911." Leave your naughty naked bits at home, people!!!
*We don't know why the story didn't reveal this person's name, but did keep referring to them as Hispanic. It didn't seem to have any bearing to the rest of the story. For instance, it never said that Ragsdale called this person any racial slurs. ??
Image via chips-tv.com.