Bonfield's probe likely will extend into next week

By Ray Gronberg

gronberg@heraldsun.com; 419-6648

DURHAM -- Auditors checking into why a Durham Police Department desk officer received $59,454 in overtime in the last year are looking into who might have authorized the payments, among other questions, City Manager Tom Bonfield said.

The probe, undertaken at Bonfield's order, appears unlikely to be finished this week. Bonfield said auditors have to check months' worth of records, and near the end of the process give the Police Department a chance to respond to their findings.

The manager confirmed Thursday that he selected the Audit Services Department to conduct the probe, rather than the Police Department's internal affairs unit, to assure independence.

"Because this had and has the potential to go substantially through the ranks of the Police Department in terms of who signed off on what and did what, I felt it absolutely essential it be handled independently," he said, adding that the necessary paperwork review also plays to Audit Services' strengths.

Bonfield will meet with the auditors today to receive a progress report.

The probe began earlier this month after a citizens' complaint helped tip administrators at City Hall to the fact that Officer Alesha Robinson-Taylor had received more in overtime last year than she earned in regular pay. As of May 13, her salary was listed at $51,220 a year.

The dollar figure is for the period Sept. 1, 2008, to Aug. 31, 2009, and is for 1,750.5 hours worth of work. That's the equivalent of 33.7 hours' extra work for each week of the year.

One of Bonfield's deputy managers, Wanda Page, said earlier this week that it's at the very least "unusual that one officer would be awarded that amount of overtime or would be required to work that amount of hours."

The next-largest overtime claim in that time was from an officer who recorded 438 hours of extra time.

Robinson-Taylor works in the Police Department's Operations Bureau and oversees towing and the "secondary employment" -- also known as the moonlighting -- of her fellow officers.

She answers within the Police Department to a short and unusually top-heavy chain of command. As of this week, it runs through the Operations Bureau's executive officer, Capt. Charlene Balch, to Deputy Police Chief Beverly Council and Police Chief Jose Lopez.

But Balch wasn't Robinson-Taylor's superior during at least part of the year.

Her predecessor as operations executive officer was former Capt. Ron Evans, police spokeswoman Kammie Michael said, adding late Thursday that she didn't have a specific date for when Balch took over.

The auditors are "looking all the way up to see what signoffs occurred, if signoffs occurred," Bonfield said. "They were directed to look not just at all the justifications, but just who signed off on it, which would have had to have happened for the payroll to be processed."

The manager's approach to the investigation drew praise Thursday from the leader of the N.C. Sheriff Police Alliance, former Durham Police Department Capt. Andy Miller.

Miller said Bonfield had made "absolutely the right call" in having someone outside the department handle the investigation. "We think it's a serious enough issue that it deserves transparency, and the city manager obvious agrees with us," he said.

Miller -- who's now a lieutenant with N.C. Central University's campus police -- said he and other members of his group are interested in seeing what the records say and are reserving judgment until they do.

But "if it turns out to be anything other than a mistake, we'll be very concerned because somebody higher up had to sign off on that kind of overtime," he said.

In that event, "making the lowest person on the totem pole a scapegoat is not going to satisfy, I think, the citizens of this town," Miller added.

Bonfield pledged Thursday to make sure the investigation is done right.

"Rest assured it will be thorough, it will be complete and it will be transparent," he said.