Court Says Cop Wrongly Fired For Masturbation Video

[matcom]

<snip>

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A San Diego policeman who sold videos of himself masturbating after removing a police uniform was wrongly dismissed from the force, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Thursday.

An officer named in court documents only as John Roe sold the videos on the Internet vendor eBay Inc., where his hobby was discovered by his supervisor. Roe never identified himself as a San Diego police officer in his sales pitch and gave a fictitious address in northern California.

The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Roe that his dismissal by the San Diego Police Department in 2001 was unjust because his off-duty actions were protected by First Amendment rights to free speech.

"We hold that when the employee's speech is not about his government employer or employment, is directed to a segment of the general public and occurs outside the workplace, that speech satisfies the public concern test," the court found.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=573&e=1&u=/nm/20040129/od_nm/odd_masturbation_dc

[bif]

1. Abusing the ol' Billy Club, eh?

[Loonman]

2. There's gotta be better ways to make money

Dude.

[Endangered Specie]

3. IF you want to get paid for doing that... sperm clinic.

[EV1Ltimm]

4. why was his supervisor looking at masturbation videos on ebay?

that should be the real question...

[Kat45]

5. Why would someone make videos of himself masturbating?

I don't get that. But I don't think he should have been fired for it. Although, would that be considered "conduct unbecoming..."? Didn't a female police officer get fired for posing for Playboy several years back?

[Adams Wulff]

6. Wait a minute...

So this jerk-off gets to keep his job, after repeatedly selling videos of himself, and yet let a woman cop (Carla Shaya) pose topless ONCE, and she hung out to dry (disgrace to the uniform, pride of the badge, blah blah blah).
This is disgraceful.