County manager fired over computer porn

AP Via newsobserver.com ^ | today | staff

[Rodney King]

DANBURY, N.C. (AP) - After a former county manager resigned, officials found he had spent 60 percent of his time downloading more than 27,000 pornographic photos onto his office computer.Last week's discovery caused Stokes County commissioners to reverse their decision to accept Craig Greer's April 28 resignation. They fired him instead and took back a negotiated $37,000 severance package.

The cache was discovered by technicians after Greer resigned during a dispute with commissioners over the county's budget priorities.

"This is abnormal," Commissioner Joe Turpin said. "He had a massive amount of categorized information on there. It had been categorized, alphabetized. It was all archived." Greer began using the computer in early 2000. The downloads, which occurred during business hours, continued to take place throughout this year.

County officials said that there was so much material they estimated Greer must have spent at least 60 percent of his work hours downloading photos. Greer said Tuesday that he downloaded the pornography, but later told the Winston-Salem Journal he wanted to say "no comment."

Greer, who is married, had held the $74,000-a-year county manager job since 1992.

Commission Chairman Sandy McHugh said the county doesn't have a policy on use of county computers because proposals for one never got past Greer, but she expects the board will consider a policy at its meeting next week.

[Rodney King]

74K is pretty good scratch in North Carolina, particularly when your job is obviously not very demanding.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Any picture of the perv.?

[Rodney King]

nope, although I suppose it might be findable on a county website.

[Billthedrill]

"He had a massive amount of categorized information on there. It had been categorized, alphabetized. It was all archived."

Hmm..."thorough habits, excellent organizational abilities." I think I've seen this guy's resume...

[VOA]

bump

[lelio]

County officials said that there was so much material they estimated Greer must have spent at least 60 percent of his work hours downloading photos.
The Office of Pulling Figures Out of My Booty must of been on the scene.
How did he negotiate a $37k severence in the first place? Did something happen?

[Noumenon]

Yeah, I've seen resumes like that, too. A couple of observations:

1. Lame-o IT dept that didn't catch this sooner.

2. That guy had a lot more going on besides a porn cache. That's a symptom, not necessarily an end in itself.

[Rodney King]

1. Lame-o IT dept that didn't catch this sooner.

I don't think that county governments really have anyone that monitors this stuff. A neighbor of mine runs an ebay business out of her state office. I asked her if she is worried that someone will notice that she spends 90% of her time on ebay. She says "no, there is simply nobody who looks at that".

[lelio]

Lame-o IT dept that didn't catch this sooner.
I wouldn't call it "lame-o" but rather "an IT department that thought they were dealing with adults and didn't have to babysit them." Obviously, they were wrong.

[csvset]

Any picture of the perv.?

From this thread, Ex-Stokes manager had computer full of porn

[Rodney King]

What makes this really bizarre it not that he had a couple of porn pictures on his computer, but the quantity and the fact that he catologued them. That's very bizarre.

[csvset]

I agree, it's strange that he spent so much time down loading all this stuff and leaves it on the computer.

[The Red Zone]

The county supposedly determined that there wasn't a crime issue, though a lot of them were labeled as "teen" and the like. I'm confused about the rules. I thought things like this would at least run afoul of obscenity laws.

[spectre]

"Commission Chairman Sandy McHugh said the county doesn't have a policy on use of county computers because proposals for one never got past Greer..."

Now THAT is precious.

[Teacher317]

He "alphabetized" his files? Isn't that done just by clicking "Arrange Icons By" then choosing "Name"? What's the big deal about that?

[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

So it took three weeks for them to find this on his machine? All catalogued and organized and sitting right there for everyone to see?

...Maybe it took that long to sanitize the keyboard. ;-)

(How would you like to be the next person to use that machine? Ecch.)

Seriously... In his defense, I wonder if he was really the one who downloaded it. I don't see anything in the article suggesting he'd copped to the downloads. Given the obvious lameness of the IT department, perhaps their network isn't properly firewalled. If so, then someone outside the network might well have been using the machine for storage, or even to run a porn site. That could explain the meticulous categorization and staggering bulk.

Broadband users: let the thought of that give you pause. Run a firewall like ZoneAlarm.com's excellent (and free) basic product at all times.

[Hank Rearden]

Yeah, I've seen resumes like that, too. A couple of observations:

1. Lame-o IT dept that didn't catch this sooner.

Keep in mind that these are people who could only get government jobs.

[Savage Beast]

One can't help wondering why he didn't buy a personal computer and download the pornography when he was not at work.

[Frank_2001]

Your tax dollars at "work".

[Noumenon]

Well, you're all correct - there does seem to be a different set of standards and care wrt to working in the goobermint sphere. Coming from an independent / high tech / corporate background, I tend not to think that way.