Norcross’ fired IT director says porn wasn’t his

There’s no disputing that 24,466 images of nude or partially nude women were found on a Norcross city computer, or that someone took the time to organize them into directories.

But the man accused of downloading the photos — the city’s fired information technology director — says he didn’t do it and is asking for his job back. Brad Williams’ attorney told City Council Monday night that there is no “smoking gun” tying Williams to the porn.

Williams, 45, was hired in March 2008 to run Norcross’ newly created IT department. The city fired him Dec. 5 after a job-performance inquiry revealed the thousands of pornographic images downloaded onto a computer in Williams’ office, according to reports obtained by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

In Monday’s hearing before the Norcross City Council, attorney David Studdard painted Williams as a victim of a “confusing set of circumstances” and implored the council to give him his job back.

Studdard said any number of people with access to Williams’ office could have downloaded the images.

“We can’t exclude the reasonable possibility that someone else downloaded this material,” Studdard said. “There’s no connective fact … that we can say, ‘Yeah, that’s the smoking gun.’”

But attorney Doug Duerr, arguing on behalf of the city, asserted that Williams, and not someone trying to frame him, imported the images and organized them.

“Why go through the time to download 24,000 images and put them in directories?” Duerr said. “That takes time. That takes deliberation. That’s an addiction.”

The images were found after City Manager Rudolph Smith directed an IT assistant to observe Williams’ activities amid complaints about Williams’ job performance, according to city documents.

During the hearing, Smith described Williams as lazy, unconcerned with fixing computer problems or even paying the bills. “He stood outside my window 60 percent of the time and he was smoking,” Smith testified.

At Smith’s instruction, the city installed monitoring software on Williams’ computer to track his activities.

Studdard also raised the question of why no one told Williams that his performance was unsatisfactory.

A Norcross police internal affairs investigation showed no evidence of criminal activity by Williams.

After the hearing, the City Council went into executive session to discuss the matter. It will issue its decision with a council vote in May, Mayor Bucky Johnson said.