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Monday, January 5, 2015

I Feel Sorry For These Librarians: Toledo Library Loaded with Crime and Bedbugs

Toledo-Lucas County Public Library—it is loaded to the gills with crime and bedbugs:
I feel sorry for the librarians and library employees.  Read the 2012 (link), 2013 (link), and 2014 (link) incident reports from the above story.  It is absolutely atrocious what librarians have to go through, including, for example, frightening sexual harassment from porn-viewing patrons:
A librarian in September, 2014, reported a regular patron had made comments about her hair and tried to touch her.  The following month, he made more comments to her.  This time it was about being the head of her fan club. 
"He keep yelling 69, 69, 69 at me because his birthday is 1969, but he was referencing the sexual act," the female librarian said in her report.  "After using the computer he wouldn't leave and kept asking for my number and saying he will miss me."
Truly unbelievable.

Of course the American Library Association says librarians are never sexually harassed and likely never will be (link).  Why does library media not report on such things, both the harassment and the cover up?  Why is it only me?  (If you are a librarian or library employee being sexually harassed, please contact me.  I am basically the only person who will help you, and I'll do so confidentially.)

And notice the library lets the vast majority of those sex criminals including masturbators get off, as my criminal law professor joked, with essentially a slap on the wrist.  See the excerpt below, for example.  What's with that?

Notice how the library defends itself.  After about 1,000 crimes per year for years, a reporter asks for public records of the crimes, and immediately the library director responds.  Not before, mind you, only when caught.  The excuse is the library has acceptable use policies in place.  "We have a code of conduct and policies that we follow as best as we can," said the director.

I have been showing year after year that acceptable use policies NEVER stop library crime.  Library filters properly managed do help stop library crime, however, and the Federal Communications Commission says library filters work really well (link).

Naturally, American Library Association leadership says filters do not work by promoting outdated and misleading misinformation from a censorious hack cited in a slick publication (link).  At the same time they claim filters on computers for children are wonderful and your kids are in a "safe library" even if the adult computers allow child porn (link).  They must think people are stupid—the filters work on the childrens' computers really well but they don't work on the adults' computers.

By the way, the US Supreme Court ruled there is no First Amendment right to constitutionally protected material in public libraries where that material comprises Internet porn (link).  And do people really want the "intellectual freedom" and "freedom of speech" to see victims of sex trafficking having the worst day of their lives as they get drugged and raped and videotaped for guys to masturbate like they do in the Toledo library (link)?

Here an excerpt from that excellent story by Ignazio Messina in The Blade (link):
Porn and computers

Policing computer usage in libraries also has become a regular duty for librarians, [head of security for the library system] Mr. Sabo said.
Looking at pornography on a library computer can result in a one-week ban, while engaging in sexual activity could mean a one-year ban.  In March, a man at the downtown library was eligible to be slapped with both violations for masturbating at a computer station.

"A couple of minutes into my observations, I noticed [the man] watching a video of a partially clothed female being raped by a male with a gun," a report said, and the man began masturbating through his pants.  He ultimately apologized, acknowledged he should not have done that in a public place, and left quietly.

When a patron is found viewing pornography, he or she usually leaves the building quietly.

But on June 28, a man viewing pornography at the downtown library refused to leave when confronted by library security.

"When I told him he has to leave he stood up and walked within inches of me, threatening, 'If he ever sees me on the street he will put me down' and that 'He doesn’t care what badge I have or if we call the police.' "  He was eventually escorted out by two security guards.

After a patron is banned, returning to the library can get him or her slapped with a criminal trespassing charge.  The libraries deal with a lot of repeat offenders.
Source:


NOTE ADDED 6 JANUARY 2014:

This post is right on target.  You can tell when a Systems + Instruction Librarian at Washington State University-Vancouver, Vancouver, WA, named Nicholas Schiller (link) takes time out from work to attack me as "evil" for "malicious harassment"!  I simply tweeted this blog post having to do with sexual harassment of librarians to Twitter hashtag #TeamHarpy that is about sexual harassment of librarians (link).  Here is my tweet:


Do you see anything wrong with that?  I don't.  That tweet, however, prompted the following response (to another tweet, shown in context at bottom) from the university librarian and ALA member:


When I responded that I had no idea what he was talking about and asked why he would be so mean (link), he made further attacks on me for "harassing women" (link), then felt compelled to explain to everyone but me that he really wasn't being mean.  Oh no.  He was just doing a public service.  He was just "publicly pointing out bad behavior" to other librarians generally at #libchat and to the upcoming ALA Midwinter meeting at #alamw15:


What was my "bad behavior"?  Pay attention because this goes to the crux about how some librarians will do absolutely anything to help ALA's "Office for Intellectual Freedom" continue to facilitate child pornography, homophobia, and sexual harassment of women in libraries.  My "bad behavior" was tweeting about my being involved in a SLAPP suit (link), exactly as #TeamHarpy was involved in a SLAPP suit, as a direct result of my reporting on someone else reporting on homophobia by representatives of the Orland Park Public Library (link):


And how do we know the #TeamHarpy matter is a SLAPP suit?  Mr. Schiller tells us, "I Am #TeamHarpy; I ally myself with Lisa Rabey and nina de jesus.  Lisa and nina are friends of mine and colleagues who are facing a SLAPP suit to silence their frank and open discussion of another colleague's behavior (link)," hyperlinks omitted.  Similar to TeamHarpy exposing sexual harassment of librarians, I exposed homophobic statements made to protect child pornography facilitation in a library.  For that I was SLAPPed.

So the #FreeSpeech experts who support those who call child pornography "intellectual freedom" (link) say it's "bad behavior," "harassing women," "evil," and "malicious harassment" for me to use a Twitter hashtag.

Who cares about the victims I am trying to help, right?

Some librarians will say and do absolutely anything to perpetuate the facilitation of child pornography in America's libraries and the massive harm caused by so many public libraries being used to consume child pornography and pornography, both against the law in public libraries, both harming sex trafficked victims and the rights and lives stolen away from them (link).

So long as I'm one of the few reporting on these issues, since mainstream library media will not touch it seriously, I'll continue to use "bad behavior" to report on and publicize the matter.

If the "free speech" librarians cannot stand my occasional use of a Twitter hashtag, that's their problem, not mine.  Unbelievable that my using a hashtag is "malicious harassment" but facilitating child porn in public libraries isn't and my saying so must be squelched with broadcast ridicule.  By librarians, of all people.



URL of this page: safelibraries.blogspot.com/2015/01/sorry.html

On Twitter: @FCC @IgnazioMessina @OIF @ToledoLibrary @ToledoNews


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2 comments:

  1. MitchMon Jan 05, 09:22:00 PM 2015

    Sounds like a homeless problem, not a filter problem.

    ReplyDelete

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