By Jeff Kass
The Rocky Mountain News
DENVER — A Denver police officer listed comp time from 1918.
One officer appeared to approve his own overtime.
Police officers may have improperly collected “broker” fees for coordinating other officers on second jobs such as patrolling Rockies and Broncos games.
Those were among the findings of a Denver police audit released Thursday that found sloppy and unreliable bookkeeping, which has long plagued the department and defied a quick fix.
The auditor’s office could not say that any officers took part in any wrongdoing. But it stressed that poor recordkeeping made it hard to know whether officers were conforming to policies governing overtime, comp time and second jobs providing security from banks to bars to ballgames.
“You can’t differentiate between an honest mistake and fraud because you have no adequate controls in place,” said auditor spokesman Denis Berckefeldt.
In response to many of the issues raised by the audit, Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman said: TeleStaff.
That is the name of a software program the department began implementing in December that Whitman says will replace the “outdated” way of tracking officer hours, which often relied on paper slips.
“TeleStaff,” Whitman said of some audit concerns, “renders these issues moot.”
The report by City Auditor Dennis Gallagher is 58 pages. Almost half - 23 pages - is devoted to Whitman’s response.
In 2004, two Denver police commanders accused of double dipping and tampering with off-duty employment records were sanctioned by losing more than a month’s pay each. Manager of Safety Al LaCabe said the officers did not double dip but cited them for splitting their shifts and banking comp time in a manner that was against department policy.
A third officer voluntarily resigned when an investigation was launched.
Uniformed officers paid by private businesses may guard banks, restaurants, bars and stores. Some second security jobs are more closely connected to city agencies, although Whitman called them all “an asset to the community.”
But audit supervisor Nancy Howe explained that officers who work Broncos or Rockies games may pay a small fee to another coordinating officer who handles issues such as officer paperwork and attendance.
The audit cites a mayor’s executive order that states: “No police officer shall serve as a broker to provide off-duty police services.”
Whitman countered that, “The auditors confuse scheduling ... with brokering.”
In the case of comp time listed from 1918, Berckefeldt said it appeared to be “some sort of honest mistake.”
But Whitman acknowledged, “The comp time system in use at the time of the audit did not identify and prevent human-caused data entry errors such as mistyped year, incorrect badge number for an approving officer or inappropriate numbers of hours worked.”
The audit period was from June 1, 2005, to June 17, 2006.
As far back as 2000, the police department was looking for a better way to track officer hours, according to Whitman. It tried one program in 2001, but it had “shortcomings and limitations” and was scrapped. The department then settled on TeleStaff, which Whitman said will centralize and calculate officer overtime, comp time and hours spent on secondary jobs.
The auditor’s office raised concerns about some of TeleStaff’s abilities and Gallagher said he expects to review the program.
Department has history of poor record keeping
The city auditor found failures in record keeping for Denver police officers doing outside work. But the issue of Denver police providing off-duty security has been contentious for decades:
— May 2005 City Council President Elbra Wedgeworth said she wanted to re-examine whether Denver police officers should be moonlighting in the wake of the fatal shooting of Detective Donald Young and the wounding of Detective John Bishop while the two were providing security at a party celebrating a baptism.
Liability was a chief concern for Wedgeworth.
“There are some businesses willing to pay workman’s comp, and then you have organizations, such as where the shooting occurred, that don’t have the money,” Wedgeworth said.
In 2004, nearly seven out of eight cops had moonlighted to supplement their paychecks, racking up more than 400,000 man-hours, or 307 hours per officer. Side jobs included providing security at banks, nightclubs, sports stadiums and special events.
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said his administration would continue to evaluate the costs, but he was not ready to rush a dialogue on whether moonlighting should continue.
Because he was judged to have been enforcing the law at the time he was shot, Young’s family received full workers compensation and survivor benefits.
Police Chief Gerry Whitman praises the off-duty work, saying the total of hours worked was the equivalent of having an extra 182 full-time officers on the streets fighting crime.
— August 2004 City Councilman Ed Thomas, a former police officer, introduced an ordinance that would have required police officers who work off-duty to arrange for their own liability coverage. The ordinance was stillborn after a show of opposition by uniformed officers in city council chambers.
— January 2003 Gary Lauricella, a well-known veteran police lieutenant, was discovered to have been working on city time as a $30-an-hour traffic guard at a private school, according to documents obtained by CBS4 News and reviewed by the Rocky. Lauricella was also found to have attempted to falsify records. Lauricella, who was paid about $80,000 a year by the city, agreed to take voluntary early retirement in the case.
Two other officers named in the double-dipping case agreed to suspensions and fines.
— December 1996 Denver police officials cut the number of off-duty hours officers were allowed to work at secondary jobs from 32 to 24 hours a week. Officers also were barred from working in topless bars and all-nude clubs.
The shift in policy came in the wake of a shooting in March 1996 in which officers Kenneth Chavez and Andy Clarry shot and killed Jeffrey Truax as he fled from a brawl at a nightclub on Broadway where the two officers were doing off-duty security work. Truax was killed and his passenger was wounded. The city subsequently paid $250,000 to the Truax family to settle a lawsuit.
— April 1996 As part of the Truax coverage, the Rocky reported that Denver had no clue how much off-duty overtime its officers worked. The police department did not know which officers handled the most off-duty assignments. And it did not always know when and where they were working.
“It looks like we have a mess here,” Lt. Mike Monahan said.
Copyright 2008 The Rocky Mountain News