Report On Offensive Emails: Justice Not Undermined, No Names
HARRISBURG, Pa. (KDKA/AP) - There's no evidence that government employees who swapped sexually explicit and offensive material for years through office email undermined the administration of justice, Pennsylvania's attorney general said Tuesday in releasing a new review.
Attorney General Bruce Beemer said that a new report by a private law firm flags 38 people as high-volume senders of inappropriate emails. Thirteen senders were senior government officials at the time or judges - including two state Supreme Court justices who resigned as the scandal unfolded over the last two years.
"There are clearly offensive emails that were recovered, hundreds of them," Beemer said. "There's no question about that."
At first glance, the report is nothing short of alarming.
Offensive and sometime pornographic emails sent or received by five judges, two police chiefs, one member of the state legislature and scores of other state government employees.
But Pennsylvania Attorney General Bruce Beemer cautioned against rushing to judgement.
"The methodology that was used to development the report is extremely over-inclusive and somewhat troubling," Beemer said.
While some of the emails were indeed indefensible, Beemer said they were relatively small in number and others were borderline at best.
After reviewing some 6.5 million emails, the investigators flagged about 12,000 as offensive, but Beemer said a computer search program used cited hundreds of emails for any mention of anatomy or ethnicity.
"Any email that mentioned Irish, Italians, Polish or African Americans was flagged as inappropriate," Beemer said.
Beemer blocked out, or redacted, all names in the report, referring the identity of the judges to the Judicial Board and the others to heads of their respective state department.
But he says he wants the reputation of innocent employees to be protected.
"It's very, very hard to un-ring the bell of - you're one of the people in the report, and you're a pornographer, you're misogynist or you're a racist when they're might be a real, real question about how these emails were analyzed," Beemer said.
In short, the Attorney General chastised the half dollar report and hopes to turn the page on the email scandal, which he said has diverted his office from its real mission of prosecuting criminals.
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