Pornography found on a computer at the Ragland Public Library back in February has members of the town council and library board at odds.Actions taken to remove the computer from the library premises and clean off the hard drive have also raised questions.
The two entities met at a work session Monday in an attempt to rectify the problem.
Councilman Gene Ford said he found pornography on a computer and asked Councilman Lanis White and Town Clerk Tanya Looney to go to the library to verify what he had seen, which they did.
“No pornography is supposed to be on these computers,” said Gene Ford. “But I found some real obscene stuff. That is something I’m not going to put up with if I have to vote to shut the library completely down because kids should not be exposed to that.”
Councilman Ford said he had been accused of removing the computer from the library but said he was not the one who took the computer.
“Neither did I ask anyone to take the computer out of there,” he said. “The only thing I have asked Patricia Poe (librarian) to do is treat everyone the same. One male patron has already been banned from the library due to obscenities. If people are not going to be treated the same, and they can’t follow the rules that are posted, I’m for doing away with this. We need to keep the library for children. Adults have no business staying at the library all day anyway.”
Connie Ford serves as the Ragland Library Board of Trustees president. She said this is not a situation unique to the Town of Ragland.
“This is something that happens at every library in every sized town across this nation and probably world,” said Connie Ford. “We have a filtering system on the computers that are supposed to catch things like that. Technology is advancing very quickly, and so it does not take long for something to become obsolete or not compatible any more.”
The filtering system Mrs. Ford talked about has been in place three years now. Since the incident with the pornography, Mrs. Ford said a new filtering system has been installed and was paid for by the library board.
“It is not exactly the way we want it, but it is the most updated version, and it is very good,” she said. “Everyone who uses the internet has to sign in. There is a 30-minute time limit.”
When asked who removed the computer from the library, no one said they knew. Mayor Gary Daffron, who was in the hospital at the time the computer was removed, said he ordered for the computer to be cleaned.
“We got a letter from the Ragland library board stating that the state library board said that computer belonged to the state, and the computer needed to be put back in the library,” Daffron said. “Before that was done, I was not going to let that computer go back into that library without it being cleaned out. I really don’t know who took the computer from the library.”
Hulen Bivins, assistant director of the Alabama Public Library Service, was at the meeting and said the computer, including the CPU, keyboard and monitor, were removed without the benefit of a proper court-ordered subpoena, which is a violation of the law.
In a letter from Bivins to Patricia Poe dated Feb. 26, Bivins stated that “ownership of the computer does not rest locally in Ragland or St. Clair County. The computer system is part of a national federal inventory and acquired using federal funds.”
It was later determined that White and Looney were at the library the day the computer was taken.
“Let me tell you, whatever she (Looney) does, she does on my orders,” Daffron said. “Even though I was in the hospital, Tanya did exactly what I asked her to do. She followed orders.”
Daffron said the hard drive of the computer was cleaned off at Watson Computers in Pell City.
“We have no evidence of who actually did this,” Daffron said. “The Ragland Police Department did not get involved directly.
“One of the council members wanted to take the computer to District Attorney Richard Minor, and I said, ‘no.’ Why? Because I couldn’t prove no more than anyone else could who was the one responsible for the pornography. I’m not going to get this town sued over what someone thinks. I don’t care who they are. I’ve been here 16 years, and I’ve never been in a lawsuit we ain’t won.”
During the regular meeting of the council, the council nominated White to serve as ex-officio member of the library board.
