More than 300 police staffers are reportedly involved in an Internet porn scandal in this island nation that centers on more than 5,000 sexual images found on police computers.
Police Commissioner Rob Robinson declined to give full details to New Zealand media but said the images in question were “not mere nudity,” with at least 30 being “sexually explicit images of sex acts of a nature and quality I view very seriously.”
Robinson said none of the images involved child porn, but some of them involved sexual violence, and the police themselves were investigating carefully the images and those believed to have stored or swapped them.
No one has resigned because of the scandal as yet, even though some of the staffers – police officials are holding off on identifying them by name or rank – face criminal proceedings or firings in the case. But the scandal is said to include at least one police superintendent who may be one of New Zealand’s 12 district police commanders.
Mark Lammas, who commands the country’s central district police and is said to have 27 constables and two sergeants being investigated in the Net porn probe, told New Zealand media this might be the most embarrassing scandal to have hit his country’s law enforcement.
"Sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot with a slug gun . . . With this one we've got out a double-barreled shotgun and shot ourselves in both feet," Lammas told the New Zealand Internet news organ Stuff.
The Net porn scandal broke after the government reopened a case involving sex-assault allegations against some police, a probe close to being disbanded for “problems hearing evidence after criminal charges were laid,” Stuff said. But the April 21 announcement of the Net porn scandal came after a five-month probe that followed an internal audit of police email that turned up the 5,000-plus images at the heart of the flap.
Eight staffers, including a detective, are said to be under investigation among eastern district police, according to their commander Supt. Grant Nicholls, who told reporters six others among his staff had been disciplined over similar misconduct in 2004. Nicholls also said he was considering adding an outside investigator to the part of the probe covering his district.
Wellington district commander Rob Pope described the scandal as a “big hit” on his district’s reputation, with the highest-ranking officer suspected in the case being a senior sergeant.
Police Minister George Hawkins told reporters that this kind of offensive behavior by police officers was intolerable. "Police are only too well aware that they represent the law but are not a law unto themselves," he said.
Liz Butterfield, who directs the New Zealand-based Internet Safety Group, applauded the probe into the police Net porn. She told NZCity.co.nz that porn is “never appropriate” in the workplace and all businesses, not just official agencies, should be aware of what is transmitted on their computer networks.
