Canadian Cops Downloading Porn While On Duty

[gonzo]

Pornographic material, some of it "very disgusting," has been found on roughly half of the East St. Paul police department's computers, according to a confidential report, CBC News has learned.

The report comes from a consultant who examined the contents of the police computers in February.

The Rural Municipality of East St. Paul, 20 kilometres north of Winnipeg, hired Rob Tramley, a former police officer, to look at the police department's operations in January, after several officers came forward with a number of concerns.

Tramley then recommended council download information from the hard drives of police computers, Reeve Phil Rebeck told CBC News.

"There may be some things that were going on that we were made aware of that warranted a little further investigation," Rebeck said.

No one on council would comment on the contents of the consultant's report, but CBC News has learned the consultant found that several officers had downloaded pornographic pictures and videos at work. The consultant described some of the pictures and videos as "very disgusting and vulgar."

The consultant wrote that too much time was being spent surfing the internet when the nine officers were expected to be policing the municipality.

He added that half of the computers were clean, but recommended those who had downloaded pornography should be sanctioned.

While Rebeck would not comment on the contents of the report, he said he was surprised by the results.

"We were quite happy with the way the force was running," he said. "We thought everything was going in a manner that we could really appreciate them handling, and it was a shocker when we found out all these problems were there."

Rebeck would not confirm whether any of the officers involved have been disciplined.