Firings Expected Over Porn at Austin-Travis County EMS

Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services officials are investigating about a dozen paramedics, including two commanders, suspected of visiting pornographic Web sites on city computers while on duty.

Officials demoted the commanders Monday and suspended them without pay for two weeks. They said some paramedics probably will be fired at disciplinary hearings this week.

"This is a very unusual, embarrassing situation, and we are going to deal with it," Assistant City Manager Mike McDonald said. "We don't expect this type of behavior from any of our employees."

Chebon Tiger, president of the Austin-Travis County EMS Employee Association, said he is not aware of the specifics of the investigation. He said his association "regrets the damage this situation causes to the trust that the public has placed in us."

Officials said they spent the weekend reviewing Internet logs to determine which Web sites paramedics had visited, how often they visited them and how long they stayed on the sites.

Some employees seemed to have spent hours at a time viewing hard- and soft-core pornographic materials on computers throughout the system's 30 stations, McDonald and EMS director Richard Herrington said.

No employees accessed illegal sites, including those offering child pornography, they said.

Herrington said most of the viewing seemed to have occurred during paramedics' down time, when they are between calls and are allowed to cook, sleep or watch television.

Each EMS station has at least one computer with Internet access, which the system's more than 400 paramedics frequently use to access medical training sites or check dispatch records.

Herrington said computer technicians last month began scrutinizing Internet access among paramedics to determine peak usage times and to spot-check sites they were visiting.

The technicians noticed that some paramedics had logged onto Web sites with names that appeared to be pornographic, he said.

Herrington said he asked the technicians for a list of paramedics who seemed to have accessed objectionable sites during the past six months, the maximum period such records are available.

EMS officials later learned that some of the sites were not pornographic and eliminated some paramedics from the investigation.

However, others sites were pornographic, Herrington said. "I was disappointed," he said. "They know absolutely it is inappropriate and not tolerated by the city and this department."

Herrington would not release the names of the demoted commanders until the paperwork was processed by human resources officials.

McDonald said city policy prohibits employees from accessing objectionable Web sites, and employees are encouraged to use the Internet only for work-related business.

City technicians try to block employee access to pornographic sites, but officials said sites are created or existing sites are altered more quickly than technicians can block them.

The city does not routinely check Internet use by all employees, but McDonald said department heads and managers can request such monitoring. He said city leaders plan to send a memo to all employees this week reminding them about appropriate Internet use.

"This is a matter we are taking very seriously," McDonald said.

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