Baltimore Fires Man For Watching 39 Hours of Porn in 2 Weeks

EDGE READ TIME: 2 MIN.

Baltimore does not need this right now!

Baltimore city officials fired a city employee in January for watching 39 hours of porn during a two-week period while he was on the job, the Baltimore Sun reported earlier this month.

Officials determined that the amount of porn the maintenance supervisor with the Department of Public Works, who was not identified, watched equated to about $1,166 in salary. He was booted after officials monitored and documented the amount of time he spent watching porn.

The former city worker was apparently bringing DVDs of porn to work and watching it on his computer, the Baltimore Sun reports, citing a report released earlier this month by the Office of the Inspector General.

The man was suspended without pay in September 2014 and fired on January 20 after a termination appeal.

Inspector General Rob Pearre Jr. said the case was unusual and that Baltimore has a policy against an employee using city time and equipment for non-city activities -- regardless of the content that is being watched.

"It would have been the same if he were watching sports on his computer for four out of eight hours a day," Pearre told the newspaper.

The incident was brought to the attention of city officials after an anonymous complaint was made to the Office of Information Technology. After the complaint was made, monitoring software was installed on the worker's computer, which logged how much porn he was viewing over an 82-hour work period, according to the inspector general's report.

The software recorded that the man watched a total of 39 hours of porn, which is nearly half of his time on the job. The Baltimore Sun notes that on one particular day, he watched porn for six-hours and 46-minutes out of an eight-hour day.

Pearre's report also notes the porn was watched in "full-screen" mode, which has officials believing there was "little to no work was being performed during the time that pornographic material was visible on the screen."

The inspector general added the city is not sure if it is going to pursue legal action to recover the wages lost. Pearre said officials don't know how long the worker was watching porn on the computer as a regular practice, but "apparently, he was getting away with this for some time."

The report also suggests that if the employee was watching the same amount of porn during the 2-week window where he was monitored, the same rate of viewing would result in 951 hours over a 2,000 hour-work year. Based on the man's salary, that comes out to $28,400 worth of pay


by EDGE

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