Altoona officer forced to quit over MySpace photos

C Kauffman

Des Moines Register

July 5, 2009

An Altoona reserve police officer who allegedly posted suggestive photos of herself on a social networking site was forced to resign earlier this year.

Abigail L. Keller, 27, is the latest in a string of Iowans who have been fired over questionable material on Internet message boards, Facebook pages or MySpace profiles.

Keller, of Pleasant Hill, resigned in February after a local businessman gave a city police officer print-outs of pages from Keller's MySpace page.

Keller was in her fifth month of service as a full-time reserve officer for the department. She had previously spent three years as a volunteer reserve officer.

Police Chief John Gray, at a recent state hearing that dealt with Keller's request for unemployment benefits, said photographs on Keller's Web site "depicted Officer Keller in a bar surrounded by male and female patrons. ... In one photograph, she is displaying her naked buttocks or mooning the person who is taking the picture. In another, she is performing simulated sex acts on both males and females."

Keller testified that one photograph showed her "making kissy faces" with a friend, and in another she and a few female friends faced each other in a circle with their tongues out.

She said she did not post a photo to her site in which she exposed her buttocks. Gray disputed that, and said he had the photo in question.

"You're pulling your pants down," he testified. "Your naked buttocks are showing."

Administrative Law Judge Debra L. Wise asked Keller whether she had posted such a photo to her site.

"No, I didn't, "Keller replied. "I took that down way before I was hired with Altoona."

Keller said she posted the bar photos in 2005, months before she was appointed as a volunteer reserve officer, and forgot about them. She said she believed access to the site was restricted.

Gray testified that he was particularly concerned about the site because it included a photo of Keller in her police uniform.

"What I found to be inappropriate was that she was associating her conduct with the police department," he testified.

Wise ruled that although Keller might have been justifiably fired, she did not intentionally disregard the police department's interests and was entitled to unemployment benefits.

"In this technology age, she used poor judgment when she posted these pictures in albums on her social-network pages and naively believed no one but close personal friends could access these pictures," Wise wrote in her ruling.