Should this librarian have been fired?
Michael Zimmer and I have both blogged about privacy and libraries in the past. Read the news story and release below and see what you think:
Librarian fired after reporting patron viewing child porn
One California county may be facing a lawsuit by former librarian Brenda Biesterfeld, who says she was fired after alerting authorities that a patron was viewing child pornography on library computers.
A librarian assistant at the Lindsay Library, Biesterfeld was on the job late last month when she noticed 39-year-old Donny Chrisler downloading child porn on library computers. Biesterfeld told her supervisor Judi Hill, who instructed her to issue Chrisler a warning. Instead, Biesterfeld called police the next day. A few days later, Chrisler returned and Biesterfeld noticed he was once again viewing child porn. She notified police, who came and arrested Chrisler on the spot.
According to a press release, the police also confiscated the library’s computer that had used by Chrisler. Supervisor Hill confronted police, accusing them of interfering where they did not belong and assuring them that county librarians were handling the matter internally. After police explained that, since federal law had been violated, it was now a legal matter in their hands, Hill demanded to know who reported the incident. The police protected Biesterfeld’s identity. However, she was fired two days later.
“Everyone says I should be a hero; instead I get fired,” Biesterfeld laments.
Library Employee Fired For Reporting Patron’s Use Of Child Pornography
Lindsay, CA – Today, Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to the Tulare County Board of Supervisors challenging the termination of Brenda Biesterfeld, a Librarian Assistant, who was fired without explanation shortly after she reported to the police that a man was viewing child pornography on a library computer.
On February 28, while working at the Lindsay Branch Library, Biesterfeld noticed Donny Lynn Chrisler, a 39-year-old man, viewing child pornography on one of the public-use computers in the library. She immediately went to her supervisor, Judi Hill, who instructed her to give him a warning and explain that on his second warning he would be banned from the library. When Biesterfeld asked if she should call the police, Hill told her not to and that the library would handle it internally. Biesterfeld was also told this happens more often than she would think. Unsettled by the situation, the next day Biesterfeld went to the police.
On March 4, when Chrisler returned, Biesterfeld saw him viewing more child pornography and summoned police. When police officers arrived they caught Chrisler viewing the child pornography, arrested him, and placed him in the Tulare County Jail, where he remains in custody on $10,000 bail. Further investigation uncovered more child pornography in Chrisler’s home.
[...]
Liberty Counsel now represents Biesterfeld and has sent a demand letter to the Library officials requesting that Biesterfeld be reinstated. The letter also demands that the Library change its policy to prevent the use of library property for illegal behavior, to establish a prompt reporting system, and to take measures to protect children. Mayor Ed Murray and his colleagues addressed the same legal concerns in a letter to the Tulare County Board of Supervisors asking them to take action.
[...]
Source – Liberty Counsel
Here are some of the questions or thoughts that went through my mind as I read the stories:
- Biesterfeld was instructed by her supervisor how to handle a situation. She did not follow the supervisor’s directions.
- If Biesterfeld was genuinely concerned about the situation, why didn’t she (also) do what her supervisor said and immediately go over and tell the man to stop and warn him?
- Biesterfeld was reporting a crime, or what she believed to be a crime, to law enforcement.
- Can your supervisor fire you for reporting a crime?
Recognizing that this may not be the most popular view but that I do not live to be popular: it seems to me that Biesterfeld may have been more interested in criminal prosecution of this person than in immediately stopping the problem. From the news stories and releases, it sounds like that on both occasions, she did not approach him or issue a “stop” instruction or cut off his access to the internet. Why not? Under the library’s own procedures and policies, she could have taken steps to stop the problem sooner. If she was so concerned about what children or other patrons might be exposed to, why didn’t she do what her supervisor instructed and go over and warn him the first time and then immediately ban him the second time?
So, do I see Biesterfeld as a “hero?” Not at all. I would have given her at least some credit if she told the supervisor in advance that she felt obligated to report the matter to the police but would also follow library procedures. Is it possible that she didn’t follow library procedures because she didn’t want the problem quickly resolved — because she wanted to make an example or test case? Sure. But the question remains: if she was really concerned about children in the library, why didn’t she ever take the common-sense approach and simply tell him to stop?
California is not an employment-at-will state, which means that Biesterfeld has some protections. And even though it is tempting to frame the issue of “Can she be fired for reporting a crime?” the question can also be framed, “Can she be fired — not for reporting the crime — but for failure to follow library policy and procedures as well?”
So what do you think — should she have been fired? What do you think should happen next or will happen next?
My experience in dealing with Child Exploitation comes from the webhosting industry. We were required by law to report two things: Child Exploitation and Terrorism. Everything else we could deal with internally, but not for these two.
Here is the law regarding the reporting of child exploitation by electronic communication service providers:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/42/13032.html
Does a library count as an “electronic communication service provider” when you use its computer?
By looking at the definitions page here:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode18/usc_sec_18_00002510—-000-.html
I would say yes.
I would say that not only is this lady in the right, the library is in violation of the law and has a policy that is in violation of the law. The people responsible for that policy should be fired and this woman should be reinstated.
No, she should not have been fired- she is a whistle blower. Lawsuit coming.
The FBI should start an investigation. There is a federal crime here. Perhaps several.
The local police should charge Ms. Hill with several crimes starting with obstruction of justice.
The County should Fire Ms. Hill.
Perhaps some judicial entity will explore the question of Ms. Hill being guilty of conspiracy and related crimes that will result in her branding for life a “sexual predator”.
If the story has been accurately reported, my non-lawyerly sense is that there is something rotten and evil going on here, and there are various crimes that seem to have been committed.
Do YOU really believe that a “supervisor” of a PUBLIC entity can order an employee under the color of authority to not report ANY crime they witness? Theft? Murder? Rape? Viewing kiddie porn? Which ones are OK and which ones not? Who gets to decide? Is the ALA some sort of entity not subject to the laws passed by the elected legislatures of this country? Is a library employee a little sovereign king ruling over the taxpayers property? Does the so called policy of the “supervisor” in this case cause the employees to work in a hostile work environment?
Geez. You have to be kidding.
Thanks for your input, Lee and James.
Lee: I wasn’t kidding. Even if she called the police, she had an obligation as an employee to warn the patron and follow the rest of library policies and procedures, didn’t she? Calling the police does not negate her responsibility to fulfill her duties as an employee, so I think that the library can make a case for firing her on those grounds. Then, too, I’m assuming that we would all agree that what the patron was viewing was pornography. What if the material being viewed didn’t meet the legal definition of pornography but she was just offended by it and she thought it was pornography? Would that change your opinion?
Will she get her job back? Probably. But I don’t see this woman as any kind of hero. Civil disobedience means doing what you think is right or required, but not trying to hide it to escape the consequences. I would have given her credit if she did what she was told to but also called the police after telling her supervisor that she felt obligated to report this.
I’ve made a few comments on this here.
Thanks for providing more food for thought, Michael. One of your comments stumped me a bit. You wrote:
If this was about someone looking up how to build a bomb I might agree that law enforcement doesn’t necessarily need be involved, but with child porn, law enforcement should be notified immediately.
Suppose that the person looking up info on how to build a bomb looked mid-Eastern. And suppose the library assistant feared that this was not just intellectual curiosity but a serious attempt to obtain info to be used against this country. And suppose that she then refused to follow library policy and contacted the police. You might argue that she had less justification in that case, but I suspect many people would think that she had even more justification in that case.
In either event, I think she erred by not being upfront with her employer that she could not/would not comply with procedures and policies.
I’m just trying to express that while leeway for intellectual freedom should be given in most cases (such as learning about how nuclear devices work), child porn is one class of content that I feel no such leeway need be granted.
Now here’s the interesting thing. The latest article from pogowasright said he was looking at blond naked boys. This is something we also dealt with a lot because there was a site we hosted for a nudist colony and they had pictures of whole families doing typical whole family things at the nudist colony. This included their kids, so people would claim it was child exploitation but it clearly wasn’t which is why there’s a legal definition for what is and isn’t child pornography. We would have to explain to people that it has to meet certain criteria to be reportable and even though some of what they complained about was in terrible taste, quite disgusting in fact, but it wasn’t illegal.
So it might be one of those situations, which is honestly why they should’ve probably preserved the drive and handed it over to the feds. Which, they hopefully did..
In a related note I’m thrilled I don’t work directly with the filthy internet anymore, because I could do without verifying that crap for the rest of my whole life.
I haven’t had time to really read the new L.A. Times article carefully, but will do so later to see if anything in it changes things at all.
Well, now I’ve read it, but I still can’t tell from the story if she actually did give him a note, as instructed, or if she gave him a note and contacted the police the next day.
And he’s schizophrenic and deaf?
And maybe the boys weren’t children?
Are you all still convinced that she should have called the police?
I think she should’ve called the police, but I also think she should’ve taken measures to preserve the data related to the report. I took for granted that the site had been confirmed as CE, either by police, or after the fact. I should’ve known better and I apologize. There is in fact leeway in cases like these simply because the legal definition of what constitutes child pornography and what people think is child pornography can differ greatly.