Police confiscated two boxes containing more than 100 pairs of children's underwear from the apartment of a man they believe viewed child pornography on a library computer. They also found images of child pornography, some laminated, and a child-size pink backpack while executing the search warrant, documents filed in 3rd District Court state.
A librarian allegedly observed the man downloading child porn at the Salt Lake City Main Library, 209 E. 500 South. He was detained by a security officer in an adjoining room while the librarian called police, who arrested the 41-year-old man. After the arrest, authorities searched the apartment, court documents state.
The man had previously been banned from the library for looking at pornography on the Internet, according to a Salt Lake City Police report. But he had since changed his appearance so library staff didn't recognize him when he returned recently. On July 11, an employee noticed the man printing two reams' worth of paper from one computer. The employee became suspicious, thinking that two reams was "a little excessive," and found that he was printing off more child pornography. The employees confiscated the printouts and told the man to leave.
On July 17 when he returned to the library, he was arrested. When police questioned him about his activities he said he was researching a book he was going to write someday, police reports said.
Police believe the man's 16-year-old daughter lived with him and was exposed to the child porn, according to court documents.
Chip Ward, assistant director of the library, told his employees last week they had done everything right. The library does have a policy against accessing pornography on library computers, but this is a different situation, he said.
"This is not against our policy, it's against the law," he said.
Good reference librarians are trained to watch their patrons, not so much to police but to watch for people who may need assistance and make themselves available, Ward said. This also helps them to monitor what is being shown on the public terminals that are in view of other patrons. If librarians view someone accessing pornography they are trained to reset the computer, inform the patron of the policy and ask them to leave.
Ward stressed that the library's policy is based on what is generally acceptable behavior in public. "It's not rocket science," Ward said.
Police also seized the computer that the man was using when he accessed the child pornography, but Ward said it will do them little good. The library has developed a system that erases all Internet history and images off the hard drive when the computer logs off. This is to protect the next users from seeing something that they don't want to see, Ward said.
Ward said the library had problems about a year ago with people accessing child pornography on their computers. And newcomers to the library sometimes are unaware of the policy, which causes problems. But once they learn the library policies there are usually no problems.
"The best guard here is a clear policy that the librarians are trained on and that the patrons are aware of," Ward said.
Contributing: Laura Hancock
E-mail: jrowley@desnews.com