With a some prompting from Guarino, Greensboro City Council at-large candidate Bill Knight adds some perspective to the latest problems within the Greensboro Police Department. It turns out that officers were not paid overtime in two police academy classes in 2004 and 2005. Unpaid compensation not a new problem, Knight discovered:
I spent roughly a half day at the public library going through old news accounts of city events during the past several years. What I found was the report of a lawsuit filed in federal district court during August, 2003 by 76 current and former Greensboro police officers claiming unpaid compensation dating back to September, 2000, when Robert White was chief and Ed Kitchen the city manager. The lawsuit was filed approximately three weeks after David Wray became chief of police.
“The reason or reasons for the missed overtime payments of $ 750,000 are unknown at this time, according to Chief Bellamy. (Tim Bellamy was David Wray’s first assistant chief appointment shortly after he became chief in mid 2003.) Looking back, it is interesting that the payroll department, internal audit department, or outside audit firm did not notice any problems in the police department payroll, including the trainee section. There were no problems mentioned by command personnel who had access to online cost of operations reports, and nothing came up during annual budget preparation. The city manger office never raised any budgetary questions about payroll.
If I’m reading it right, Knight’s saying it’s odd that no one noticed problems with the Police Academy’s payroll, if indeed there have been problems dating back to 2003. City Manager Mitchell Johnson does indeed plead ignorance, saying this “really came out of the blue.”
But remember that problems with the police academy were part of Johnson’s dramatic statement back in October:
“I was told that the director of the Police Academy had presented false and misleading statements to the state and that our accreditation could be lost as a result……After an investigation by the State our training Academy’s accreditation has been placed on probation as a result of the exact allegations I was informed of. Wray’s administration told me there was no substance to this allegation when I brought it to his attention.”
I realize Johnson’s probably referring to the 2006 state reprimand after “two recruits injured during training to sit for the state certification exam without completing a skills evaluation for arrest techniques.” But after such a reprimand, you’d think the city would keep a pretty close eye on the police academy to make sure things were being run properly. Instead we get things still coming “out of the blue.” I guess since David Wray’s gone, Johnson (and Carmany, for that matter) assumes things are now running smoothly with GPD. Kind of makes you wonder exactly what he does and doesn’t know.
Something to keep in mind for tomorrow’s election.
