Chief: 2 Incidents in 11 Years Where Library Should’ve Called Police

The Orland Park Police Department was among several people and entities that requested records from the Orland Park Public Library following a mother's challenge to the library to tighten Internet access after claiming to see a man looking at a naked woman on a library computer.

Police found two occasions since 2002 — one where a patron was accused of masturbating openly and another where a patron was accused of looking at child pornography — warranted a call to police and staff did not contact them, according to Orland Park Police Chief Tim McCarthy. After both occasions, staff members were reminded to call police in such incidents, though the people accused were warned that repeating the actions in question will get them banned.

“We talked to them and they totally agreed,” McCarthy said. “It appears in almost all of the serious incidents they are contacting us. Child porn and masturbation should be reported and heightened awareness of these things is a positive. But also people being accused of doing something they didn’t do isn’t a good thing either.”

One of the incidents happened on Aug. 20, 2009, when a patron said a man was seen masturbating in the open in the adult computer area. A staff member told the man he will be banned from the library if he did it again. Library Director Mary Weimar the next day sent an email to the staff members working during the incident to call police in such a situation as it “is an illegal act and requires police intervention.”

The email further read that Weimar spoke to the man accused of masturbating, and asked him to leave and not to return. Police are investigating the incident, though they found that the name and Buffalo, N.Y., address the man gave were false, McCarthy said.

The other incident was reported to happen on March 8, 2011. A patron came to the reference desk and said she saw a man looking at child pornography on a computer, according to library records. The woman said she didn’t want to leave her personal information, and didn’t want the man to know she reported him. The staff person told two other employees at the computer help desk to watch the man’s screen. They said they only saw him looking at Medicare sites on his screen. The woman who reported said he was quickly switching windows.

Two days later, director Mary Weimer and the head of IT approached the man accused, and told him that a complaint was made about him viewing an inappropriate website. The man said the site just appeared but he never tried to access it. He didn’t specify what type of website came up, according to the report. Weimar told him he should contact IT staff if that ever happens again, and told him that if any future complaints were made about him accessing inappropriate websites, he would be banned from the library. The patron “eagerly concurred,” according to library records.

What to Read Next: Other incidents from the past 11 years at the library and how they were handled.

Read past posts related to the issue:

• Library Porn Viewing Sets Mother on a Mission in Orland
• Woman Changes Story About Man Touching Himself in Library
• The Orland Park Public Library's Statement on Computer Use
• Megan Fox's Full Statement on Pornography at the Orland Library

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