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Captain who oversaw BPD evidence warehouse in Hyde Park indicted in overtime scandal there
By adamg on Tue, 03/30/2021 - 9:04am
The US Attorney's office reports the indictment of Richard Evans, 62, of Hanover, a retired Boston Police captain, for his alleged role in an overtime fraud ring at the BPD's evidence warehouse on Hyde Park Avenue in Hyde Park.
Evans was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, one count of embezzlement from an agency receiving federal funds, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and three counts of wire fraud, the US Attorney's office says.
Nine officers were charged in 2019 for allegedly putting in fraudulent time sheets over three years.
The US Attorney's office now says overtime abuse at the warehouse actually occurred over at least five years.
According to the indictment, Evans oversaw the BPD’s Evidence Control Unit (ECU), which was responsible for, among other things, storing, cataloging and retrieving evidence at the warehouse. ECU officers were eligible to earn overtime pay of 1.5 times their regular hourly pay rate for overtime assignments. It is alleged that beginning in at least March 2015, Evans and other officers routinely departed overtime shifts two or more hours early but submitted false and fraudulent overtime slips claiming to have worked the entirety of each shift.
The indictment alleges that the fraud occurred during one overtime shift, called “purge” overtime, that was focused on reducing the inventory of the evidence warehouse. The shift was supposed to be performed from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. on weekdays. On days which Evans claimed to have worked until 8:00 p.m., the warehouse was closed, locked and alarmed well before 8:00 p.m., and often by 6:00 p.m. or earlier. Despite this, it is alleged that Evans routinely submitted false and fraudulent overtime slips claiming to have worked from 4:00 to 8:00 p.m. Evans also endorsed the fraudulent overtime slips of his subordinates.
From March 2015 to February 2019, Evans and his co-conspirators allegedly collected tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent overtime. Specifically, Evans allegedly received over $12,395 for overtime hours he did not work and endorsed dozens of fraudulent overtime slips submitted by subordinates.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
The surprise here is that
The surprise here is that this is being prosecuted. Looks like a failure of the police union not to have written in their contract that the evidence warehouse workers should be paid for a full 4 hours shift even if they only showed up for 15 minutes -like, say, the detectives who can do that anytime they have to show up in court.
The Bay state Banner has done plenty of good work uncovering the police overtime scam that allow over 500 PBD officer to earn over 200k a year and fleece the tax payer by an equal amount. Unfortunately, it has received little attention.
https://www.baystatebanner.com/2020/10/07/bpd-investigating-overtime-con...
Not how that works.
These "purge" blocks were supposed to be for actual work. If you want to be paid 4 hours, you have to work four hours. You don't have to take the blocks if you don't want to.
The 15 minute rule is for officers being called in on their days off to work an undisclosed amount of time, usually for court. It wasn't optional. Extension of shifts are also paid actual hours, not four hour minimums.
Cut & Paste (again)
“the allegations contained in this indictment by a senior law enforcement officer are not reflective of the conscientious hard-working members of the Boston Police Department."
LOL
What?
All three of them?
That many?
Where'd the third come from?
The charges will have to be dropped however
As you all know, a Sergeant Detective in IAD was arrested on meth charges out of NH. Given his arrest, we must follow the same line of thought in the Sean Ellis case and the Hinton Lab cases, and assume the entirety of IAD is tainted and therefore any investigation that they touched is also tainted and must be thrown out.
I hope you will apologize to all of the officers who were marred by this tainted investigation
No.
No.
sorry
But you see that is how it works. When the lab workers took drugs and falsified info, we said "well everyone must be lying". When the BPD detectives who were part of the Ellis investigation were found to be corrupt we said "Let's conveniently forget that the GF's prints were on the gun, they tried to change the car's appearance, could not account for why they were on the side street,, etc".
so same rules need to apply.. or are we just ignoring facts if it suits us?
The circumstances are
The circumstances are completely different. The corruption involved in the other cases you are mentioning directly impacted the handling of cases. An internal affairs detective getting caught with meth in NH does not mean that IA investigations against cops falsifying overtime slips have been tarnished.
And the issues at the Hinton Laboratory were a massive failure in management above those who were committing the crimes. Those issues should not have occurred, they should have been caught early on. They were not. That is why every case processed by the lab in the period in question has lost credibility.
Not different at all
Do we actually know the other chemists were not doing the tests? Do we have any evidence of them doing any wrong doing that would affect the other cases? Nope. But we are willing to point at management and say that is enough.
The NH meth cop was an IAD supervisor. He was management. So using your analysis, if management is flawed then the whole ship sinks.
Seems more like
an argument for throwing out all the cops, rather than an argument for throwing out the cases against any of them. I'm not sure this is the "pro-criminal justice system" argument you seem to think it is.
It's in their culture.
From Top down it seems like police officers are just expected to cheat.
And it seems it's always the Feds holding them accountable.
Perhaps truth is found in the Details
It is unfair that this cop is prosecuted for claiming overtime when Details are equal in their graft but are codified as legal.
The other day a cop was yammering with a construction worker - both blocking traffic on that side of the street, although neither was needed. Then when I saw a construction worker hand something to the cop, watched the cop walk away, while his weapons was clearly exposed, and enter his private car - just raised so many questions in my mind. But since I know Detail graft is legal when performed by police or firefighters, I chalked this up to business as usual. As for the whatever was handed from a construction worker to the cop, or the cop's need for his jacket to make his weapon clear to any seeing him, well, I just figured a cop being a cop.
As NYC's police have become a local military, our local police have evolved to being a money making machine.
So, if another cop sees an opportunity to make some extra cash using a method that is a stretch of what already is a legal method, isn't it unfair to single him out? How will this impact his family? His children? How will this impact his co-workers who do the same. (In Foghorn Leghorn's voice) "Unfair I say, just unfair."