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GUILDERLAND
Officers’ messages land them in hot water
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

    The Guilderland Police Department intends to discipline four officers who were caught using the mobile data terminals in their patrol cruisers to send inappropriate messages to one another over the past six months.
    Capt. Curtis Cox declined to name the officers involved but said they violated two department policies when they used the onboard device — a terminal similar to a laptop computer — to engage in banter unrelated to official police business. He wouldn’t specify exactly what the officers wrote on the terminals other than to say profanities were used and the tone of the missives “crossed the line” of reasonable workplace discussion.
    “Some of these conversations shouldn’t have been put in writing,” he said following a Town Hall news conference Thursday afternoon. “They were inappropriate.”
    But while the department is taking the violations seriously, Cox said none of the officers’ actions merited suspension. He said all four offi cers — whom he described as veterans of the force — remain on active duty while their punishment is being mulled internally at the administrative level.
    “This case will be appropriately handled at our level,” he said.
    Department rules specifi cally forbid officers from using police equipment for anything other than its intended purpose. Specifi cally, the procedures stress the mobile terminals should be used only to transmit police-related data and shouldn’t be accessed “in any manner that would tend to discredit the Guilderland Police Department.”
    The messages were discovered earlier this month during a routine review of the system. When the inappropriate messages were uncovered, Cox said the 34-member department suspended the use of the terminals for a short period of time so it could assess the problem. ....................>>>>...................>>>>...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01100&AppName=1