By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- City auditors are looking into why a desk officer in the Durham Police Department received $59,454 in overtime pay over the preceding 12 months.

The audit, ordered by City Manager Tom Bonfield, is ongoing and should produce "some findings" by the end of the week, Deputy City Manager Wanda Page said.

Bonfield acted in apparent response to a citizen's complaint.

He began Sept. 2 by requesting a printout of overtime payments to officers, and decided on an audit after the document showed that Officer Alesha Robinson-Taylor had received about 9 percent of all the overtime the department paid between Sept. 1, 2008, and Aug. 31, 2009.

Robinson-Taylor works in the department's Operations Bureau, and is responsible for overseeing towing and the "secondary employment" or moonlighting of her fellow officers.

Her chain of command currently runs through the bureau's executive officer, Capt. Charlene Balch, to Deputy Police Chief Beverly Council and Police Chief Jose Lopez.

The printout showed that Robinson-Taylor claimed 1,750.5 hours of overtime, the equivalent of 33.7 hours for every week of the year. The overtime payments more than doubled her ordinary salary.

"Certainly, it is unusual that one officer would be awarded that amount of overtime or would be required to work that amount of hours," Page said.

The next-largest overtime claim in the department was for 438 hours, the equivalent of 8.4 hours a week.

Police spokeswoman Kammie Michael, asked for comment from Lopez and Robinson-Taylor, referred all questions about the matter to the city manager's office.

Page said administrators believe they're dealing with "an isolated incident" because there's nothing else on the list that stands out from "the special operations and other things the Police Department has had going on over the past year."

She added that auditors are trying to obtain supporting evidence and documentation to among other things see whether the claims were "completely authorized."

To date, no one has been placed on leave or disciplined.

"We are going to wait until the investigation is complete to make the appropriate determinations," Page said. "Whatever is found, we're going to take the appropriate action regarding that."

In assigning the probe to the city's Audit Services Department, Bonfield effectively bypassed the Police Department's internal-affairs investigators.

The department's Professional Standards Division, under the command of Capt. Chris Allen, works directly for Lopez.

Audit Services, by contrast, works for Bonfield and the City Council.

Page said the city manager "has the discretion of determining who is most appropriate to perform an internal review."

She added that Audit Services is "certainly capable of determining whether overtime paid to someone has been properly documented and supported."

The auditors did an organization-wide check of overtime practices in fiscal 2007-2008, before the period covered by the printout that sparked the new probe.

It found one issue with a Police Department policy on paying overtime to officers involved in "grant funded or special assignment" programs, an apparent reference to officers that work in a different part of the operation than Robinson-Taylor

More broadly, it said the city Human Resources Department should monitor compliance with overtime policies.

The fiscal 2007-08 audit found that the Police Department paid $411,769 in overtime that year, for about 13,149 hours' worth of extra labor.

The more recent printout Bonfield requested said the department paid $658,066 in overtime in the preceding 12 months, for 19,273 hours of extra labor.

City budget officials said last week the Police Department underspent its fiscal 2008-09 budget by nearly $1.1 million as officials clamped down on spending because of the recession.

The department is authorized to employ the equivalent of 631 full-time employees. It received a special overtime allotment in fiscal 2008-09 to pay for "special crime-fighting initiatives and to compensate for operational vacancies."