Officer benched over porn images
D.A.R.E. instructor used city’s laptop, police report says
Wednesday, January 30, 2008 3:31 AM
By Dean Narciso THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Dublin Officer K.C. Jones
A veteran Dublin police officer could learn next week whether he’ll be punished for downloading hundreds of pornographic images while working as the school resource officer at Dublin Scioto High School.Since October, Officer K.C. Jones, a 17-year Dublin officer and a D.A.R.E. instructor for Dublin schools, has been reassigned to a desk job and ordered not to contact staff members or students at the school.
Jones, 50, had been viewing images that depicted young women dressed as schoolgirls, according to an internal police investigation completed Friday.
The sites included High School Cheerleader and Kinky Catholic Schoolgirls , according to a police report.
The investigation said Jones violated several departmental rules but did nothing criminal because it couldn’t be determined whether any of the people in the pictures were minors. The investigation recommends “significant discipline,” including removing Jones permanently from working at schools.
Dublin Superintendent David Axner said Jones has not worked at the high school since the computer images were discovered in the fall.
Jones declined to comment.
During interviews with police officials, he admitted using Dublin’s laptop to download the images, the report says. He also said he’d been misusing computers at both the school and police headquarters for six years.
Jones faces a hearing on Monday to answer departmental charges of conduct unbecoming an officer, prohibited use of city equipment and violating direct orders, which is related to him contacting a teacher at the school.
Many of the images were stored on the same computers, portable drives and compact disks that contained presentations Jones has used for Dublin’s D.A.R.E. anti-drug/anti-alcohol program since 1997.
For example, an image of a woman wearing a wet T-shirt was in a computer folder titled “lesson plans.”
“The risk of these images being displayed in a damaging situation was extreme,” Dublin Police Lt. Heinz von Eckartsberg wrote to Dublin’s police chief.
Authorities began investigating Jones in October, after a police sergeant who was substituting for him discovered pornography on a digital storage card from Jones’ Dublin police camera. Also, an assistant superintendent had given Jones a computer flash drive with pornography that he had discovered in April. The administrator thought the pornography belonged to a student. The investigation found that Jones downloaded it and didn’t tell anyone.
Jones, who had been at Dublin Scioto for four years, visits other schools for D.A.R.E. to educate children about the dangers of drinking and drugs and about dangers on the Internet.
Jones was named Ohio’s D.A.R.E. Officer of the Year in 2004. His personnel file shows numerous commendations and letters of praise from both parents and teachers.
Dispatch reporter Charlie Boss contributed to this story.