An employee of the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department used a city credit card to purchase a little recreation for himself—namely, an Xbox 360.
That's not all the gaming recreation that the employee, Naikia Howard, indulged in: he also took a copy of Wii Sports and a Wii home from a Seattle teen center.
An ethics investigation found Howard guilty of violating ethics rules and misusing public property.
In Dec. 2009, Howard purchased forty copies of Wii Sports and then distributed them to late-night community centers.
This Jan., when asked about the Wii console and a credit card receipt for an Xbox 360, Howard told an ethics-commission investigator that they were in a community-center safe.
The safe, however, was empty. According to the investigation, Howard asked a fellow employee for help with a cover-up.
Howards has been a Seattle Parks and Recreation Department employee since 1999. He's been demoted to a parks laborer and agreed to pay a $1,500 fine. Think how many Xbox 360s he could have bought with that!
Seattle city employee agrees to fine, demotion [Seattle Times Mobile]
(Top photo: Ted S. Warren | AP)
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