On Monday, Mosca gave suspensions to six officers - Donald Hull, Cliff Barrows, Kevin Roche, Brian Ziolkovski, William Bergantino and Jeffrey DePerry - whom a report last year cited for unauthorized Internet use during work hours. Five other officers - Charles DellaRocco, Charles Mercer, Robert van der Horst, Tim McDonald and Brian Walsh - agreed not to challenge their penalties and received a smaller cut of up to three vacation days.
Surfing the Internet on company time goes against the department rules, according to town labor attorney Pat McHale, who has advised the police on the computer problem. "This department, like most businesses, has rules regarding computer use - namely, that computers must be used for business-related purposes," McHale said.
Deputy Chief Tom O'Brien, who conducted the investigation, monitored only the computers in the squad and dispatch areas, which are for general use by the department. By checking computer use, McHale said, O'Brien hoped to determine whether the dispatchers had extra time on their hands.
"The purpose of the monitoring was to study the activities of people on dispatch and try to determine if there was time available on those shifts to do other things they needed to be doing," he explained.
The controversy over Internet use in the police department began in April 2003, when Officer Chris DeMarco, then the union leader, received a 45-day suspension after computer-use monitoring revealed that he had numerous hits on pornographic web sites. Later in 2003, O'Brien monitored the rest of the department's computers and issued a report in November identifying the 11 officers.
Mosca and O'Brien were not available for comment. Hull, the current union president, also decline comment. It has been reported that Hull would file grievances with the state labor board.