Posted on 03/14/2008 12:33:12 PM PDT by Enterprise
Edited on 03/14/2008 1:40:48 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
[The original source is Gannett, which allows headlines and links only]
Did I read this right? She was fired for reporting a sex crime commited by a patron in her library? Somebody will be writing her a large check.
..and the community better give her a big thank you as well.
Well, not if the ALA has anything to say about it. Librarians all over the country have been told by their professional organization to back off, it’s “just porn.” The only reason this woman was brave enough to complain was that she had been on the job only a few months, and didn’t know the ground rules...
A 16 yr old girl called into Jay Sekulow’s show last month, saying she worked at the local public library where they had a special computer for porn off to one side.
The bigger problem was that there was one guy in particular that kept coming in. A librarian checked his name against the sex offender list... yeah, you know he was on it.
Not sure how this one worked out, but Jay got his team on it right then and there.
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The librarians professional org is telling them not to report child porn? Unbelievable. Am I in some kind of a liberal twilight zone? Can somebody beam me back to the US of A.
“Supervisor Allen Ishida said librarians should call police only when child pornography is involved.
“When it gets into other pornography, it’s kind of like art,” he said. “It’s hard to distinguish what’s pornography.”
Ok, a little lesson for you Mr. Ishida....
Art would be in the Art section of the library or your local bookstore...or a museum.
Pornography, unlike art, is usually found in the back corner of your local video store behind a black curtain or in a store with blacked out windows with signs that say “ADULT XXX VIDEOS”.
What a moron. lol
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The authorities count on that as well.
sounds like CA. report it, you get fired; don’t report it, get charged with conspiracy.
Time to burn the library cards.
If it gets in front of a jury, she’ll win.
Infuriates me they can view porn of any kind in a public library.
Evidently the county librarian made the case that she should not be allowed to pass her probationary period. Since that is tied up in the area of "personnel matters" we are not able to adequately judge the truth of the case. However, it looks mighty suspicious. In the defense of the fired employee it would say that she absolutely did the right thing, and further, she would be complicit if she knew a felony was occurring and failed to notify the authorities. I would rather be fired for exposing the truth of something than be arrested for being part of the coverup.
That’s about how I interpreted this.
She's a librarian... and she doesn't know how to catalog? If they have a porn section in the library do they not know what to put in there? LOL
No, you didn't read that right. What the article says is, that she believes she was fired for that reason.
It may even be true. But this is yet another of those stories told from the perspective of the aggrieved party ... and thus it is not to be taken at face value.
The ALA is a pack of loony liberals who spend their time voting to “support abortion rights.” Many librarians have resigned over things like this, but the problem is that being a member of the professional org is important in getting jobs, etc. So I say the woman was brave, and I hope her community appreciates her.
“Believe it or not,” Biesterfeld quoted Hill as saying, “this is more common than you think.”
This is a tactic used by many of the perverted causes. Try to make it appear a common happening and therefore just accept it..
I really take issue with porn in libraries, as well as computers. This is not a civil liberty. I don’t believe the general tax payer realizes anyone can view porn at libraries.
Before making a statement like that, Mr. Ishida should have been aware that an arrest was made in this case for some very serious felonies for some porn which wasn’t considered as being “art.”
Against her is her probationary status. Less entitlement to the job and easier to dismiss. But the right judge and jury can overlook all that for the public benefit of her action and the wrongheaded dangerousness of the employer's action.
At least we can take comfort in the fact that they ran it by “human resources officials” before firing her.
Never mind legal or the PR folks — human resources!
It’s a mystery to me too. There are plenty of porn stores people can visit to view this stuff. Somehow before the invention of computers they managed.
I hope she is reinstated.
Knowing the fact pattern as it has emerged, I would unequivocally support her case.
I would assume that porn would be filed under P for pervert.
A deaf pedophile, what next? She should be commended for getting this pervert out of the library.
“...stood behind him for 10 to 20 seconds.”
And then she called the police? She certainly didn’t give him much time to escape that online site! What if it were the Abercrombie catalogue site? Is he still guilty? :)
I would rather recall the officials. Sometimes when my computer is down I need my card to use the library computer to check my E-Mail and post on FR.
They want the taxpayers to pay for it. Most of us thought our tax dollars were buying computers and Internet connections for poor kids to do their homework. But the porn addicts (including a large number of the “homeless”) seem to feel that what the taxpayers were really funding was free jollies for creeps. Unfortunately, a lot of city governments and professional organizations agree with the creeps.
I can’t figure that one out either. Astounding.
The news on KMJ just reported that a stash of kiddie porn was found at the house of the suspect.
That occurred to me too. And now that this has gone national, someone is going to be doing a lot of pillow biting.
I'm not surprised at all though. I knew that these free computers would be used for criminal purposes.
This woman deserves a huge pat on the back and public praise!
That's a knowingly untruthful statement.
If the Enterprise account listened to KMJ Radio this morning, the Enterprise account also knows that, according to at least one Tulare County Supervisor, the police referral was not the motivation for Biesterfeld's dismissal.
True, though the reporter tried again and again here to get the library’s side.
They said it was personnel matter, so they couldn’t comment.
I understand such matters should be private, but if I had a business, once the other person said I did something, at that point, it ceases to be a private issue, and I would freely discuss it.
“Personnel matter” is a nice cover-up.
I believe this to be the typical response of tax funded libraries. It is okay for adults to view pornography on the library computers even though children frequent the libary and can see the screens. Yep, our tax dollars at work supporting pornography.
I would think that if the police were involved and took a computer from the library, there is reason to believe her.
To believe from Webster New World Dictionary “Believe (1) To take as true, real etc.”
I believe she takes it as the truth that she was fired for the reason she states.
Budget for library system next year should be $0.
Why is this is a surprise to anyone? The same leftists that have controlled the public schools and the universities for decades also control the public libraries.
Remember after 9/11 when librarians refused to give FBI agents information on foreign Arabs who had used the library to look up info on explosives, airplanes, etc? Protecting their clients privacy.
Remember Tom Tancredo decrying public funds being used for an exhibit in a public library of models of penises?
Take a look at the books available in public libraries, and the magazine selection...at least the ones I’ve seen (granted on the left coast) are definitely slanted, and it’s not in the conservative direction.
I haven’t heard all the statements, but I am aware that it has been said that the police referral was not the cause of her being fired. I will be paying attention to this in the coming months, and if something else breaks I promise to ping you.
This is no surprise when one remembers when the Library Association strongly opposed the Patriot Act’s library policy years ago.
If I were DA, I would call the folks in (that did the firing) to charge them with complicity concerning the child porn....unless a certain librarian was rehired!
“computers and Internet connections for poor kids to do their homework”
Poor kids don’t go into libraries, and if they do it’s to play games on the computer. All the “poor” families around here have low-income housing, subsidies for their utilities, free medical if under 18, and free food from a variety of sources; they can afford better computers and high-speed connections at home than I do.
For quite a while I was using the internet at the library. I noticed a very interesting phenomenon. Outside were black kids playing in the street. Inside on the computers were white and Mexican kids, playing games, constantly being hushed by the librarian. Over at the tables with piles of books were Asian kids absorbed in study.
This was the same every day after 3:00 (when school got out), not a one-time phenomenon, and the groups were consistently that distinct. I’m sure it’s different in different areas, this was middle-class suburb of California.
Perhaps so. But regardless of what she believes, she might really have been fired for other reasons, instead.
Note that the firing came at the end of her 6-month probationary period, which (to my mind) is probably the key fact here.
Probationary periods are a common and useful method for determining whether or not a person fits in with the organization. It is not that uncommon for people to be fired at the end of them.
A library is a much different environment from an auto parts store or a law office; and not all people are well-suited to the work, which involves various parts of public relations; knowledge of the library; digging for information; and so on. She may just not have been working out in general.
It is, of course, entirely possible that her firing came as a result of this one thing. But I don't believe it.
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