– FBI agents caught sexting and dating drug dealers (Telegraph, Feb 22, 2013):
Dating drug dealers, harassing ex-boyfriends with naked pictures, and pointing guns at pet dogs: these were just a few of the offences committed recently by serving FBI agents, according to internal documents.
Disciplinary files from the Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility record an extraordinary range of transgressions that reveal the chaotic personal lives of some of America’s top law enforcers.
One male agent was sacked after police were called to his mistress’s house following reports of domestic incident. When officers arrived they found the agent “drunk and uncooperative” and eventually had to physically subdue him and wrestle away his loaded gun.
A woman e-mailed a “nude photograph of herself to her ex-boyfriend’s wife” and then continued to harass the couple despite two warnings from senior officials. The Bureau concluded she was suffering from depression related to the break-up and allowed her to return to work after 10 days.
But the sexually explicit picture was only one of what FBI assistant director Candice Will described to CNN as a “rash of sexting cases”. The network was the first to obtain the logs.
Two other employees, whose genders were not specified, sent sexually explicit messages to fellow members of the Bureau, one a work Blackberry during office hours.
The second employee included a nude photograph which “created office gossip and negatively impacted office operations”.
“When you are given an FBI BlackBerry, it’s for official use,” Ms Will said. “It’s not to text the woman in another office who you found attractive or to send a picture of yourself in a state of undress.”
During another incident, an employee snapped during an argument with their spouse and went on to snap an e-reader in half. As the situation deteriorated they pointed an “unloaded gun at dog’s head while dog was sitting in spouse’s lap”. The agent was suspended for 45 days.
The logs, which contain incidents from July 2012 to January, also describe how a woman “engaged in a romantic relationship with former boyfriend (now husband) knowing he was a drug user/dealer”. She was sacked after lying about the relationship.
Other firing offences included shoplifting, possession of child pornography and hiding a recording device in a supervisor’s office during an employment dispute.
The incidents, and many others, were included in quarterly emails sent to all FBI employees to help them in “steering clear of ethical pitfalls and other violations”.