Do You Really Need a Gun to Police the SEC?

AP
Adam Martin 1,552 Views May 11, 2012

It's the SEC's job to police Wall Street, but who will police the SEC? One serious-sounding dude who wants to bring a gun to work would have been your answer until this week, but he's just been banned from the SEC office.

Reuters' Sarah N. Lynch has an exclusive on David Weber, the newly hired lead investigator at the SEC inspector general's office, who apparently approached the job with a little too much zeal. His role is to investigate SEC employees for things like looking at porn on their computers, and Weber apparently thought he needed to carry a gun and wear a bulletproof vest in order to do that effectively. Some employees also said he was a "physical threat," Lynch reports, so now he's on leave and banned from entering SEC headquarters.

Something tantalizing is hiding just below the surface in this story. Weber says he's being retaliated against for raising a complaint about misconduct in the inspector general's office. That story came out on Monday, sourced to an "individual" who we can assume  was Weber. "The complaint includes allegations that the misconduct compromised certain investigations of the SEC," The Wall Street Journal's Jean Eeglesham reported. But frustratingly, nobody's providing any details about this alleged misconduct. For now, the only specific example of odd behavior is that of Weber himself, and his penchant for heavy protection.

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