Police Chief: Former Commander Told Officers False Grant Reporting OK

A former Des Plaines police commander told police officers reporting overtime hours for a federally funded traffic enforcement program was OK when it was not, said Police Chief William Kushner.

In a public statement on Tuesday, the city announced 13 Des Plaines police officers would be suspended for varying lengths of time following an investigation into information reported to the Illinois Department of Transportation to qualify for grant funding.

The Illinois Department of Transportation suspended funding of the traffic safety grant in August 2012, pending an investigation into data about DUI arrests that may have been fraudulent.

, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in February. Veit was accused of inflating the number of DUI arrests that would qualify for the federal funds from 30 to 152, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, between 2009 and 2012.

Last fall, Kushner launched an internal investigation to examine the accuracy of reports and information provided to the United States Department of Transportation and the Illinois Department of Transportation under grant-funded DUI and seat belt enforcement campaigns. The investigation, which was conducted by an outside investigations consultant, sought to determine whether officers intentionally misrepresented the number of hours they worked in order to receive grant-funded overtime compensation. 

Kushner said they would stagger the suspensions to minimize the impact on the department’s operations, and since the suspensions were unpaid, the compensation not paid to suspended officers would offset the cost of paying other officers overtime pay to cover their shifts.

The 13 officers facing disciplinary action were not privy to the terms of the grant, Kushner said, and suspensions were hefty fines to pay for the false reporting.

“When I say this, I’m not making excuses for these officers, but what they did, they did after they were told by a, then, very well-respected member of the command staff that it’s OK; it’s allowed under the grant,” Kushner said.

Some officers said in hindsight it didn’t seem like it was right, Kushner said, but the former police commander told them it was OK, and he was doing it too.

“And they said, well, the commander is telling us it’s OK, it must be OK; the feds give money away all the time for stuff,” Kushner said. “And that’s what happened.”

New checks and balances have been put in place to minimize the chances of something like this occurring again, Kushner said, and Des Plaines police are scheduled to take ethics training in the fall.

Since police departments recruit officers from the general public, they are representative of the communities they serve in many ways, Kushner said, both good and bad.

“We not only get the racial and sexual breakdowns, we also get some of the faults of the public as well, and we’re all human,” Kushner said.

Kushner said he hoped his department would move forward from this point from what he described as “the 900-pound gorilla in the room.”

“What I would ask everybody to look at, don’t prejudge everybody, and don’t prejudge these 13 officers,” Kushner said. “I believe that we have turned a corner with this.”

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