Charges: Current, Former California Officers Faked Overtime | California News

OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Dozens of recent and previous Freeway Patrol officers have been charged with racking up extra than $226,000 in phony hours in an time beyond regulation fraud scheme, California’s legal professional general mentioned.

The costs introduced Thursday stem from a prison investigation of officers in the East Los Angeles station.

Involving 2016 and mid-2018, 54 officers recorded several hours of phony additional time while patrolling significant-occupancy targeted visitors lanes or furnishing defense to point out transportation workers in building zones, prosecutors mentioned.

“The alleged offenses had been not discovered earlier due to the fact the supervisors who would have been the types to report these functions have been also committing the fraud,” in accordance to a felony criticism versus two of the officers. “Furthermore, the fraud commonly took area during graveyard hrs, which was outdoors of the standard functioning several hours of workplace professionals.”

Of the 54 officers billed, 11 are even now utilized by the agency, the freeway patrol explained.

Officers who are even now with the company and underneath investigation by the Department of Justice have been placed on administrative time off and had their peace officer powers taken off, mentioned Officer Jose Barrios, a office spokesman.

“As a professional legislation enforcement company which holds it personnel to the optimum of criteria, the CHP usually takes all allegations of misconduct critically,” Barrios mentioned in a statement. “The CHP uncovered the time beyond regulation fraud in the East Los Angeles location a number of many years in the past through an inside evaluation.”

The freeway patrol would have no further more comment amid the investigation and pending litigation, Barrios claimed.

Prices had been submitted earlier this thirty day period and the officers were being booked by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office this week, according to a statement from the attorney general’s business.

“Trust is a essential component of thriving regulation enforcement,” Legal professional Standard Rob Bonta reported in the statement. “These defendants disregarded the regulation via their alleged steps and did so without having believed of how their perform would effect the California Freeway Patrol or the community that reliable them to protect and serve.”

The freeway patrol stated in early 2019 that it had briefly relieved “dozens” of officers from responsibility even though it investigated irrespective of whether they had billed the state for hundreds of hrs of suspected bogus time beyond regulation costing about $360,000, in accordance to information accounts at the time. They mentioned at the time that the abuse seemed to be isolated to officers masking the Los Angeles region and the company had altered its additional time techniques in response.

Copyright 2022 The Involved Push. All rights reserved. This materials may perhaps not be released, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.