Sex in Public Library Bathrooms Results in Nation's First Full-Time Psychiatric Social Worker Stationed in a Public Library

Sex in public library bathrooms. Can you believe this?  Read it yourself in "Library Adds Social Worker to Assist Homeless," by Heather Knight, San Francisco Chronicle, 11 January 2010:

The bathrooms often have proved downright scary, with people doing drugs, bathing in the sinks and having sex in the stalls. .... But the library has, well, begun to turn the page on the problem by hiring what is believed to be the country's first full-time psychiatric social worker stationed in a public library.

The country's first full-time psychiatric social worker.  Look, they had to hire someone just to watch the bathrooms:

Melvin Morris recently became the first one hired by the library to work up to 20 hours a week for $12 an hour monitoring the restrooms to make sure they're clean and safe.  .... 

The bathrooms, one person wrote, "have changed in a good way."

Well, that's a relief, so to speak.  Two workers hired just to patrol for library crimes, as well as for laudable goals. 

San Francisco libraries do not filter the Internet.  Might this refusal to filter have anything to do with the crime in the library?  Might filters go a long way toward reducing the need for two employees patrolling for crime?  This looks relevant from See For Yourself:

San Francisco Bay Area, CA:  "Porn, Sex Crimes At Libraries; I-Team Investigation," KGO, 29 Nov 2006,  "[T]he Martin Luther King Library has a problem with pornography.  They have no rule against viewing photographs or full-screen sex videos from Internet sites, even with children nearby.  Chief librarian Jane Light says it's a matter of free speech.  ....  ABC7's Dan Noyes: 'I've seen the [privacy] screens and I see how they work and the stuff is visible from behind.  You can see everything.' Jane Light...: 'So you can avert your eyes.'  ....  San Jose's police blotter over the past year lists several arrests for child porn at the library, at least ten cases of child molestation or other sex crimes involving kids and several cases of men viewing porn and performing a lewd act, right at the terminal.  ....  Sgt. John Laws, San Jose library police: 'It showed him sitting at the computer terminal and ... masturbating.'  ....  Marcia Stacke, Child Quest International: 'You know, sometimes I wonder if we're just too afraid to be, I don't know, sued in this country.  We've got to step out and protect our kids.  Enough is enough.'"

Here are many more public library bathroom stories.

H/T to LISNews.org that gave a H/T to Change.org.  Could you imagine if someone now gives a H/T to SafeLibraries.org?

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