This is one in a series of many stories coming out about people getting canned for something they posted on a social networking site. A cop from Altoona, PA was forced to resign for allegedly posting risqué pix of herself on MySpace. The officer, 27 year-old Abigail Keller, was in her fifth month of full-time service after spending three years as a volunteer reserve officer when a local business person gave city officials in Altoona print-outs of the questionable pictures from her MySpace page.
The police chief hearing the case commented that the pictures depicted Officer Keller in a bar ‘displaying her naked buttocks or mooning the person who is taking the picture‘. And that in another photograph she is ‘performing simulated sex acts on both males and females‘. (Sounds like my kind of girl!) The officer insisted that those photos had been taken down prior to being hired by the police department. She went on to claim that she had forgotten that said photos were even posted and that she was of the belief that access to the site was restricted. (Which it is, if you change your settings, Einstein.)
The police chief ultimately ruled that although Keller might have been justifiably fired, she did not intentionally represent the police department in a negative light (no, they can do that all on their own) and was entitled to unemployment benefits. The police chief’s final comment on the case was that Officer Keller “used poor judgment when she posted these pictures in albums on her social-network pages and naively believed no one but close personal friends could access these pictures“. Well, duh.
WARNING: Anything that you put up on the Internet can and will be viewed by employers, co-workers, potential employers, ex-boyfriends, and former managers who aren’t qualified for their jobs but will get pissy anyway. Are we clear on that?
$@bs
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niceguyted on 07.06.2009
( I ) <— for all those poor souls with whom *I* work. Smile, ya freaks.