Wesr Palm Beach- Investigators with the city of West Palm Beach found computer porn, and lots of it on some of the employees’ work computers.

Nudity, people engaging in sex acts, and women in skimpy swimwear.

The kinds of pictures they knew or should’ve known, could get them into serious trouble and cost them their jobs.

“I don’t know if it was really a surprise. Actually that this took place at all is disappointing to us,” said Chase Scott, a spokesman for the city of West Palm Beach.

When they should’ve been working, some were looking at racy photos, some were visiting websites with names such as “skinvideo-dot-com.”

Or surfing websites looking for fetishes involving cheerleaders, foot fetishes, and porn dealing with bisexuals, couples, and lesbians. Not only were some of them looking at computer porn on city-owned computers, but some were receiving inappropriate e-mails and then forwarding them to other co-workers. That too, is a violation of city policy dealing with “electronic communications, computer and internet use” spelled out in the West Palm Beach city employee handbook.

Others were swapping photos like one with the caption “The assassination of Hillary Clinton,” and there were photos with racial slurs.

The Human Resources division found e-mails with religious slurs such as “How to tell if a Catholic is driving too fast” or a “cartoon of a cross.”
In all, 17 city employees violated internet policy and 13 of them lost their jobs because of it. Nine resigned in lieu of termination and four were fired.

“It’s an ongoing investigation. So we’re just following the chain to see who else actually participated or sent inappropriate e-mails out. We anticipate that there could be some more people,” Scott said.

One of the fired employees told us by phone he’s done nothing wrong and says this has ruined his life. He worked for the city of West Palm Beach for 31 years in the utilities and wastewater division, and claims someone else was on his work computer, looking at porn. Some of the incidents happened, he says, on days when he wasn’t even working.