Maricopa Police Lt. Larry Eckhardt and several other city employees have received disciplinary training stemming from the improper use of the city’s e-mail server, according to MPD Chief Kirk Fitch.

In an e-mail sent to InMaricopa.com, City of Maricopa Police Association president Aki Stant attached a copy of an e-mail sent by Lt. Eckhardt to Lt. Willie Payne containing pictures of naked women on Canadian currency.

The e-mail was a chain message Eckhardt had originally received from a source outside the city joking about a new form of currency designed to stop counterfeiting by “terrorists.”

In his e-mail, Stant wrote that this was a violation of Arizona Revised Statute 38-448, which states an employee cannot “knowingly use agency-owned or agency-leased computer equipment to access, download, print or store any information infrastructure files or services that depict nudity, sexual activity, sexual excitement or ultimate sexual acts.”

“The images raised serious concerns about the lack of professionalism and discretion among those police managers,” Stant wrote.

Stant came across the e-mail after submitting a public records request for all e-mail messages sent to and from supervisory-level city employees in April 2009.

“Every now and then city employees' friends will send them an inappropriate message that will get forwarded along to another employee,” Chief Fitch said.

He added that city employees have been recently reminded of the policy and told to make their friends aware not forward inappropriate messages to city e-mail addresses.

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