Seattle- King County has ordered five corrections officers at the downtown Seattle jail to be suspended for three days each after they were caught sharing pornographic images with each other through the county e-mail system.
“It’s a violation of department and county policy,” said Maj. William Hayes with the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. “It’s inappropriate material being transmitted via county e-mail.”
The agency’s internal investigations unit found out about the pornography Sept. 7, though Hayes did not know how investigators were alerted to the problem.
A two-month investigation revealed that the five corrections officers, all with five to 15 years in the department, had been using the county e-mail system to share pornography, from still photos to video clips to cartoons.
“I think they were just making some very poor choices,” Hayes said. “It’s embarrassing for everybody.”
The officers didn’t create the images, Hayes said.
“They were sent from outside the department to an officer’s work e-mail. In all likelihood they were downloaded from a porn site, but we have no idea what the sites were,” he said.
The officers were each ordered to be suspended for three days, though at least two are appealing the discipline.
The revelation comes even as the jail struggles to improve its image, particularly at its downtown facility.
Last year, a corrections officer was found guilty of sexual misconduct for having sex with an inmate, and two others pleaded guilty to sexual contact with female inmates.
Also last year, investigators with the federal Department of Justice Civil Rights Division found jail staff fell short of legal standards in medical treatment provided to inmates, preventing inmate suicides and protecting inmates against physical and sexual abuse by corrections officers.
And Thursday, lawyers for a former inmate announced they had sued the jail, contending the poor medical care there led to the inmate contracting the highly infectious strain of staph infection called MRSA.
Jail officials have been working with the Justice Department on a settlement to avoid a federal lawsuit, and in 2006, brought in an independent consultant to examine conditions at the jail that contributed to sexual misconduct.
Hayes said it has been a difficult time for the majority of the 340 officers working at the downtown jail.
“We’re trying to run a good facility where people can come to work and provide a safe, humane environment for inmates,” he said. “It can be very frustrating for those employees who work very hard to do the right thing.”