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For eight years, Sheldrick Newton worked a menial job at Dallas’ Central Library while harboring larger ambitions.
“I am a very talented person and can fit just about any part,” he wrote in his ExploreTalent.com profile. “[M]ost people see me as a person who could possibly put a movie or a sitcom for television and produce and direct it and have it become a hit show.”
He’ll have to realize his career in show business without the financial backstop of a city job. He was fired on October 2.
What for? According to city documents, Nelson had sex with a woman “in a public area at the Library while he was on duty, during his work day.” Twice.
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The woman initially reported the incidents to Dallas police as sexual assault but later asked the department to drop its criminal investigation. They did, forwarding the matter to city auditors, who concluded that, while the sex may have been consensual, it violated any number of personnel rules and “creates a negative public perception and a public trust concern.”
One can’t, after all, put books in their proper place when one is busy putting other things in theirs. The audit report is light on detail, perhaps mercifully so, but it would be nice if it provided a more specific definition of “public area,” since that’s a place one might want to avoid.
