26 New Orleans police officers suspended from off-duty security work amid investigation
New Orleans LA November 20 2021 The New Orleans Police Department suspended 26 officers from off-duty security work Thursday while it investigates alleged misconduct, after news reports detailing possible payroll fraud from officers double-dipping or reporting hours they didn’t appear to work.
The suspensions were announced by Deputy Superintendent Otha Sandifer in an internal email first reported by WVUE-TV. It said an audit by the Police Department’s Professional Standards and Accountability Bureau found “several discrepancies” in the officers’ timesheets. The suspensions are in effect while an investigation continues.
Among those suspended from details is Sgt. Todd Morrell, who heads the Police Department’s bomb squad. Morrell was the subject this week of a WVUE story that found he was racing sports cars at a west bank track numerous times while clocked in for police work or off-duty security assignments.
A police spokesperson said a disciplinary investigation by the Public Integrity Bureau is underway. The Office of Independent Police Monitor, which is authorized by Louisiana state law to investigate complaints involving off-duty police details, also is involved.
“We take these allegations very seriously,” NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said. “When matters such as this have been brought to our attention in the past, we have acted quickly and decisively and that will be the case again. This behavior will not be tolerated.”
WVUE’s reports this week came a month after similar reporting by The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate, which raised questions about the timesheets of a couple dozen officers who make an extra $40,000 or more through off-duty-security work.
The newspaper’s reporting flagged Morrell and his officer brother, Nicholas, as among those making the most money via such details. They are brothers of former state Sen. JP Morrell, who was elected Saturday to an at-large seat on the City Council. The Times-Picayune story also highlighted a number of cases in which officers were being paid to be in two places at once. Nicholas Morrell is also among the 26 suspended from detail work.
Many of the highest-earning officers have blown past hourly or weekly work limits that are spelled out in a 9-year-old federal consent decree, according to city data compiled by Skip Gallagher, a University of New Orleans professor.
A decade ago, the U.S. Justice Department skewered the Police Department’s paid detail system, which was then run by the officers themselves. The Justice Department described it as the department’s “aorta of corruption.”
City government responded by taking over management of the off-duty work, creating the Office of Police Secondary Employment to dole out the moonlighting jobs equitably among officers and to monitor the work. Officials said the office audits the officers, but the timesheets of several of the highest-paid detail officers cast doubt over whether City Hall or the Police Department was adding up the hours.
Gallagher said Thursday that the 26 officers suspended from detail work comprise “maybe half of the officers that are participating in this.”
“Many of the examples are prime candidates for payroll fraud. They’ve been engaged in ridiculous hours that are not humanly possible to work,” Gallagher said. “Hopefully they’ll do a thorough audit and really investigate these officers.”
Donovan Livaccari, spokesperson and lawyer for the local Fraternal Order of Police, suggested the police administration – not the suspended officers – is responsible.
“My recent experience with police details leads me to believe that the majority of problems experienced with details and the rules and regulations that govern details have their genesis in administrative mistakes,” Livaccari said. “I think that everyone would be best served by looking at the process for handling details instead of suspending details for 26 hard-working officers.
“We are coming up on Thanksgiving – when the city of New Orleans hosts the Bayou Classic and many associated events. A lot of those events utilize detail officers. Many of the officers on this list would be among the officers working Bayou Classic events. There has to be a better way to do this.”
The 26 officers suspended from detail work made more than $1 million combined last year in off-duty work through the Office of Police Secondary Employment, public records show.
Measures put in place years ago under the consent decree to rein in abuse of the detail system and prevent officers from working too much have largely gone by the wayside, as city officials push to meet heavy public demand for officers while the Police Department staffing remains historically low.
The consent decree, for instance, set a cap of 24 hours per week for officers to work off-duty details, but exceptions are allowed for major special events, and Ferguson regularly grants them. Over the past six months of 2020, for instance, officers could work details as much as 44 hours per week. Several officers exceeded even those higher limits, according to their timesheets.
Also among those suspended was senior officer Brian Sullivan, a motorcycle officer who led the force in pay last year, at $215,000, including $90,000 from off-duty jobs, records show.
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