An NBC2 Investigation has revealed 47 Cape Coral city employees were disciplined for watching Netflix while logged into the city's network, a violation of city rules.
An NBC2 Investigation has revealed 47 Cape Coral city employees were disciplined for watching Netflix while logged into the city's network, a violation of city rules. The investigation revealed employees watched more than 500 hours of Netflix over a three month period although city officials cast doubt on whether the employees were watching while on the clock.
The City of Cape Coral launched its own investigation when IT staff noticed internet speeds would drag occasionally. Video entertainment appeared to be the culprit.
"Netflix was identified as the main streaming media service that was using the bandwidth," said city spokesperson Connie Barron.
She said the city's contracted software security company set out to find who the main users of Netflix were. They analyzed gigabytes used over a three-month period from June through August and found that 47 city employees misused city resources by watching Netflix on the network.
"They were using the city's network in order to watch Netflix, and that was just not allowed."
By converting the amount of gigabytes each employee used, NBC2 was able to determine how many hours each employee watched Netflix on the city server.
At the top of the list was a water plant employee who watched 82 hours of Netflix over a three month period.
Forty-one out of the 47 employees named were employees at the Cape Coral Police Department.
CCPD spokesperson Lt. Dana Coston declined to do an interview with NBC2.
While the employees might have been signed into the network, Barron doubts the employees were watching Netflix and neglecting work.
"It is highly unlikely that you had city employees sitting around watching Netflix and ignoring their regular work duties and I can say that with quite a bit of confidence," Barron said.
"Do you have any evidence to support that?" asked reporter David Hodges.
"We do not have any evidence to support either way, and that was one of the things we were trying to see if we could determine," Barron said.
Barron said their investigation was unable to glean exactly when employees were watching Netflix. She said most employees admitted to watching Netflix on the city's network but said they did so while on break. She said police officers explained they would watch Netflix while on outside work detail.
Many of the police employees watched less than 10 hours of Netflix over the three-month period. Former officer Anthony Foster was an exception.
In October, Foster was disciplined by his commanding officers for a lack of performance. A performance improvement plan drafted for him said he had "low self-initiated activity" such as traffic stops. The memo was just more than a month after Foster was found to have watched more than 40 hours of Netflix on the city network.
Foster was fired in January after being disciplined again for mishandling evidence in a vehicle burglary case.
"You have to take these employees at their word at this point?" asked reporter David Hodges.
"I think you have to take the employees at their word," Barron said.
City Councilman Richard Leon agreed.
"When they're working with the public, they have that downtime; it's good for them to unwind and it is a stressful job," Leon said.
Leon said he only found out about the Netflix issue after NBC2's public records request brought the issue to light for him.
"Thanks to you, we were able to see a problem that the city management was able to address, and from future on out, no Netflix is allowed on the city internet," Leon said.
By banning Netflix, Cape Coral joins a list of other local government including the City of Naples, Collier County and the City of Fort Myers that have blocked the website. Lee County has not, and a spokesperson said they've had no issues with employees regarding that site.
The 47 employees in Cape Coral who misused city resources were given verbal warnings, which Barron said all department directors agreed on.
"There was some uncertainty with how we could interpret what the data was telling us, and because of that we did not want to take the discipline to a point that was unfair," Barron said.