Pubdate: Sun, 28 Dec 2003
Source: Florida Times-Union (FL)
Copyright: 2003 The Florida Times-Union
Contact: http://www.times-union.com/aboutus/letters_to_editor.html
Website: http://www.times-union.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/155
Author: Jim Schoettler, The Times-Union
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Forfeiture
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/corrupt.htm ( Corruption - United States)

HOW A COP HID $560,000 IN THIS OFFICE

(And Why It Took Years For Police To Find It)

Self-motivated. Trustworthy. Needs little or no supervision.

That praise for a Jacksonville detective accused of stuffing nearly
$560,000 into two Sheriff's Office file cabinets came repeatedly from
supervisors who were supposed to know what he was up to. They didn't.

They did so little to keep tabs on Detective Brian Murphy that they
once copied his performance evaluations from one year to another
without changing a word.

They did little firsthand oversight, working in separate buildings
from where Murphy and another officer sold vehicles and other property
seized in crimes. Police said Murphy, apparently fooling even his
partner, began hiding the money in his office in 1998 rather than
depositing it with the tax collector. Investigators don't know why.

Even when supervisors sought help, repeatedly requesting a sergeant's
slot so someone could work over Murphy's shoulder, they were rejected
because patrol jobs were a priority.

An agency responsible for uncovering schemes of deception got duped
from within. Not only did supervisors not supervise, auditors didn't
audit. Budget managers didn't manage. Administrators didn't
administrate.

And what internal controls may have existed were weak, at best. Now
Murphy faces being fired, while the Sheriff's Office is left to figure
out what went wrong and whether any money is missing.

"An embarrassment? Of course it is," said Sheriff John Rutherford.
"You have an officer with over $500,000 stuffed away in drawers. It's
a huge embarrassment."

The Dec. 4 discovery in the forfeiture unit followed Rutherford's
initiative to reorganize the Sheriff's Office since taking over in
July. Former Sheriff Nat Glover blames the problem, in part, on poor
supervision but won't say more because of the ongoing
investigation.

Chief Carol Hladki, who oversees the division where Murphy worked,
admitted supervision was lax. But she said it has been difficult for
supervisors and administrators like her, who've spent their careers
training as police officers, to suddenly become accountants.

"It's all geared toward police work and fighting crime," Hladki said
of her training. "I need a better understanding of budget and fiscal
management procedures directly under my area. I feel weak in that area
and am committed to learning more about it so I as a manager can
understand when I have oversight."

Police, prosecutors and auditors suspect it will take months and cost
tens of thousands of dollars to account for the money and determine
whether any laws were broken.

"At best, you're talking about incompetence on the part of the person
who didn't make the deposits," said Richard Wallace, the city's head
auditor. "It resulted in a loss to the city not only of the use of the
funds, but interest that would have accrued."

Investigators have turned the money over to the tax collector for its
intended use in a fund to maintain seized vehicles.

Murphy, a 23-year police veteran set to retire in 2005, faces being
fired after an internal affairs investigation charged him
administratively with incompetency, misconduct and unbecoming conduct,
according to a police report obtained by the Times-Union on Saturday.

"When Murphy failed to properly deposit funds ... he brought the
Jacksonville Sheriff's Office into disrepute," the internal affairs
report said.

Murphy, put on desk duty, is scheduled to challenge the Sheriff's
Office charges at a disciplinary hearing Monday. No criminal charges
have been filed. Murphy, 45, and his attorney, William Sheppard,
declined to comment.

An angry Rutherford is demanding the fiasco never be
repeated.

A Crime Scene

What police found in Murphy's two locked file cabinets Dec. 4 led them
to gasp at its enormity, then string up yellow crime scene tape
ordinarily reserved for robberies and murders.

Plastic bags filled with about $530,000 in cash and $30,000 in checks
and money orders lined the cabinets. Attached to the funds was
paperwork detailing settlements Murphy and another officer made with
the owners of hundreds of vehicles and other property seized from them
in drug busts and other crimes.

"It was worse than I could imagine," said Director Jerry Spates, who
approved an audit of Murphy's unit after learning no one could
remember when the last one was done. "All the drawers were full."

Murphy performed his work under a state law that allows police to
seize and seek forfeiture of vehicles and other property from someone
accused of using it in a felony. Most of those cases involve drug
crimes, though vehicles can also be seized from habitual traffic
offenders and in some drunken driving cases.

Police can take civil action to keep the property for their own use or
sell it at auction. If police decide there is no profit to be made or
the case looks shaky, they can negotiate a cash settlement to return
the property to its owner.

Forfeitures and related paperwork were handled for years by individual
detectives, but an increased workload led to the creation of a full-
time forfeiture unit. Enter Brian Murphy.

Murphy joined the Sheriff's Office in 1980 as a corrections officer,
became a patrolman in 1985 and was fired four months later after
suffering two epileptic seizures. He filed a federal discrimination
lawsuit in 1987, and an arbitration panel ordered him reinstated.

Kept off the street, the computer whiz worked desk jobs that included
overseeing the property room's money vault. Records show he became the
forfeiture detective in April 1996, negotiating all settlements,
collecting funds and making deposits with the tax collector. He also
trained colleagues in the forfeiture process.

Supervisors noted that Murphy's workload had been doubling and they
gave him a partner in 1999. The second officer took over the
settlements and gave the money to Murphy for deposit.

Sheriff's Office annual reports show about 1,960 vehicles were sold
under negotiated settlements from 1995 to 2002, earning the Sheriff's
Office about $615,000. More than 200 settlements were also made over
cash and other property, bringing in another $190,000. Police refused
to release 2003 records because of the ongoing investigation.

The numbers were provided by Murphy, but apparently don't match
records found in his office, the internal affairs report said.
Supervisors at the time had no clue anything was amiss.

"His work ethic is an example for his peers," wrote one supervisor in
2002.

Prosecutor Tom Kimbrel, a friend of Murphy's who worked with him on
civil cases, said he was "totally shocked" that Murphy didn't make the
deposits.

"It's just totally out of character for Brian," Kimbrel said. "He's
just as honest as the day is long. He plays by the rules."

Those rules were found broken Dec. 4.

At a meeting the previous day, supervisors told the internal auditor
they didn't know where the money from negotiated settlements was
supposed to go. Murphy missed that meeting.

On Dec. 4, Murphy was asked by his supervisor for a deposit slip that
showed which account the funds were placed in. Murphy told the
supervisor it had been "a long while" since he had made a deposit --
three or four years -- and that he just "got behind," the internal
affairs report said.

The supervisor, Capt. Jim Ponce, asked no other questions. After the
money was found, Murphy was sent home and his office computer was seized.

Detectives and auditors sorting money and paperwork until 2:30 a.m.
the next day discovered that partial deposits from settlements were
made in November 1998 and the next year, then stopped, the internal
affairs report said. Murphy refused to help them re-create the trail.

"At least we caught it ourselves," Spates sighed.

As the money was being counted, officials scrambled to piece together
the broken trail of oversight.

Plenty Of Blame

"When it's finished, there will probably be enough blame to go
around," admits Director George Dandelake, the Sheriff's Office budget
chief for 23 years.

The roots of any finger-pointing begin with a 1975 city ordinance that
established the sheriff's confidential vehicle maintenance fund. The
ordinance required reviews and audits of the fund by the council auditor.

But Bob Johnson, the former council auditor, said his office took on
such a workload that it began to rely on internal auditors hired by
larger city agencies to provide oversight in such areas.

Jack Klees, the Sheriff's Office internal auditor for all but the last
year of Murphy's forfeiture work, said he was busy auditing other
accounts and was never told about the fund.

"There were just lots of places where money was coming in. I obviously
didn't know about that one," said Klees, who resigned in November 2002
after being told his private tax work for fellow employees was a
conflict. "I wanted more help from management to strengthen internal
controls. I don't think they took those [suggestions] seriously enough."

Dandelake said the auditor, who reported directly to the undersheriff,
should have been reviewing all areas that handled cash. He also said
some suggestions made by Klees were implemented, but not one that
would have ensured that all revenue flowed to a central source for
deposit.

Dandelake said the vehicle maintenance fund and some other revenue
sources didn't come under the oversight of budget officials because
different departments were responsible for them. Police policy,
however, states that the responsibility for managing fiscal affairs
was delegated from the sheriff to Dandelake. The former budget chief
said he didn't see a reason to change the oversight procedure until
the forfeiture discovery.

Dandelake admits that when Murphy stopped turning in deposit slips for
settlements to the budget office, somebody in the office should have
noticed. While money was being funneled into the fund from at least
two other sources -- towing fees and auctions for seized vehicles --
negotiated settlements were not.

"A red flag should have gone up. We should have said, 'Why did those
deposits stop coming in?'" Dandelake said. "But those funds are the
responsibility of the division chief over those areas. That's clear in
the policies."

Chief Hladki said the supervision structure and a lack of resources in
her department were flaws that should have been addressed. Normally,
officers working in areas such as the forfeiture unit would have a
sergeant as their direct supervisor. It worked that way before the
unit was moved from one department to another in 1999. Afterward,
Murphy was supervised by a captain responsible for seven other areas.

Repeated requests made by Hladki for another sergeant were rejected.
The one time Glover and his undersheriff agreed to add a new sergeant,
there were no eligible candidates.

"We felt like we were spread too thin and wanted closer supervision,"
Hladki said. Two captains who were Murphy's immediate supervisors and
a sergeant who got shifted to that role for a brief period declined to
comment.

Even without the sergeant's slot, someone should have been keeping an
eye on Murphy, said Alvie Powell, Hladki's former supervisor.

"I always stressed to my chiefs and assistant chiefs and supervisors
that you need to be sure you're doing your spot checks, especially in
high-liability areas," said Powell, who retired this year. "Somebody
obviously let that forfeiture unit slide."

Spates said the chain-of-command should have been tighter.

"That was an awesome responsibility to have a detective handle," said
Spates, who was an administrator in the corrections department until a
promotion in July. "He should have had to have brought receipts back
to somebody."

Johnson said leaving one person in charge of the money flow was
dangerous.

"In areas where you have huge amounts of cash, the person who collects
the cash is never the person who [handles deposits]" Johnson said.
"You don't want one person being able to manipulate that."

Rutherford has begun taking steps to tighten internal controls, such
as planning to hire someone with an accounting background to help the
internal auditor account for all revenue. Police budget officials also
plan to get involved in more direct oversight, though supervisors will
still be responsible for doing their jobs, Dandelake said. Training
issues also will be addressed, officials said.

Those improvements can't come soon enough, said Wallace, the current
council auditor.

"Obviously, I'd like for every city dollar to be properly accounted
for," Wallace said. "That's why we have to have all the controls in
place. In this case, they weren't. I'm not real happy."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake