Baltimore city worker watched 39 hours of porn in 2 weeks of work

BALTIMORE, May 4 (UPI) -- Baltimore city officials revealed a Department of Public Works employee was fired after spending 39 hours of an 82-hour work period watching porn.

Inspector General Rob Pearre Jr. released a report last week revealing the employee, a maintenance supervisor at the facilities division of the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant, was suspended in September 2014 and fired Jan. 20 at the conclusion of an investigation.

The report said officials received an anonymous complaint about the worker in August of last year and monitoring software installed on the man's work computer found he spent 39 of the 82 hours he spent working in a two-week period watching a pornographic DVD on the computer.

One one occasion, the worker spent nearly seven hours of his eight-hour work day viewing the DVD.

The report said the DVD was being played in full-screen mode, leading investigators to determine that "little to no work was being performed during the time that pornographic material was visible on the screen."

Pearre said the 39 hours the man spent watching the DVD were worth about $1,166 of the worker's salary. He said the man was fired for violating a city policy using city time and equipment for non-city functions.

"It would have been the same if he were watching sports on his computer for four out of eight hours a day," Pearre told the Baltimore Sun.

The inspector general said officials do not know the full extent of the man's porn-watching habits at work, but "apparently, he was getting away with this for some time."

Pearre said the city has not decided whether to attempt to recover the wages paid to the man for the porn-watching time through litigation.