An unidentified 39-year-old man from Royal Oak, Michigan, turned himself in to county authorities March 8 some three weeks after police escorted him out of the Baldwin Public Library in Birmingham because staff suspected he had been displaying child pornography on a library computer.
Authorities had issued a warrant for his arrest in early March; on the day he was forced to leave the library, police had discovered in his briefcase a computer disk containing what Warrants Director James Halushka said in the March 8 Oakland Press was “extremely graphic” child pornography.
BPL director Leslie Kee told American Libraries that the incident, which she characterized as isolated, prompted the board at its March 6 meeting to ask that she review the library’s unfettered Internet-access policy. American Family Association of Michigan Gary Glenn, who lost a campaign February 22 to get a filter mandate passed in Holland, attended to ask that filters be installed on all but one machine, which he wants marked with a sign in half-inch-high letters warning that unrestricted workstations can link to sexually explicit materials, Kee said.
Posted March 13, 2000.