NYPD PAY SCAMMERS GOT PROMOTED
Cops get rich in overtime caper Instead of punishment, they’re promoted
The NYPD’s secretive disciplinary system for its officers has always been the subject of great criticism. Many officers say the penalties are arbitrary — severe in one case, minor in another — and almost always light if the accused is a supervisor.
In this series, the Daily News profiles the system through four cases that mostly played out behind closed doors, with the department hiding behind a controversial legal interpretation it believes precludes public disclosure. Here, we profile a connected sergeant accused of bilking the department of overtime whose career still flourished. ON PAPER, it was just another grueling day at the office for Brooklyn transit robbery Sgt. Ruben Duque — one that started at 6 a.m. and lasted 12 hours.
In his movement log — a record of where a cop goes during daily assignments — Duque said he spent all of Nov. 20, 2012, at his Brooklyn desk working on “Case 1038,” including his three hours of overtime.
In reality, Duque’s whereabouts were an open question — with his phone records indicating he was home on Staten Island, even as he fattened his paycheck.
In March 2013, Duque’s substantial overtime and strange working patterns caught the eye of the detective bureau investigations unit.
A subsequent probe found that Duque had indeed stolen at least 133 hours of straight time, plus overtime worth about $15,000 from Nov. 11, 2012, to May 5, 2013, records show. He also misused an NYPD car on 71 different occasions by driving it home, records show.
His abuse was so bad, a senior chief blurted out, “Is this a mistake?” when he reviewed the investigation’s findings, a source said.
Duque, 41, had entered false information into the robbery squad’s command log and in his activity log, the investigation concluded. He also entered oversight and the selective nature false information into overtime of the department’s secretive disciplinary reports on 45 dates, claiming system. he was working a specific robbery “If a chief is calling about an investigation when he was not — a potentially that didn’t involve him fireable offense. at all, the disciplinary system is dysfunctional,
The department’s internal and rife with nepotism,” probe was never made public — said civil rights lawyer Joel until the Daily News obtained the Berger. records and verified the information with sources.
And as it turned out, Duque wasn’t acting alone. His older brother Juan Duque, 44, also a sergeant, got ensnared in the probe.
But the Duque brothers kept their jobs — and were promoted by top NYPD brass — even after their misconduct was exposed by investigators.
The leniency, sources said, stemmed from a powerful, topranking official, the current chief of crime control strategies, Dermot Shea.
Shea, who was known on the job as Juan Duque’s “rabbi” — a mentor and protector — inserted himself into the investigation and demanded its premature end, according to a source with close knowledge of the probe.
Like the case of retired Lt. Adam Lamboy detailed Thursday in The News, the Duque case illustrates both gaping holes in NYPD
When approached by the Daily News, Ruben Duque sprinted into his house, closed the blinds and refused to answer his door.
Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said Ruben Duque has done a great deal of good in his career despite being disciplined.
“The issue isn’t if Sgt. Duque should have received a more severe punishment, been promoted or if any police officers should,” he said. “The issue lies in the policies that are in place. To place eternal punishment on officers would be excessive.”
From the beginning, detectives investigating the alleged anomalies in Ruben Duque’s time records didn’t have to look far.
On Nov. 20, 2012 — the day he claimed to have worked from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Brooklyn — he made 14 phone calls on Staten Island between 6:37 a.m. and 5:58 p.m., according to records obtained by The News.
Duque lives on Staten Island, in a tidy townhouse on a quiet cul-desac in Bloomingdale Park, with his wife Rosemary, who is also a cop.
In 2012, Juan Duque occupied a coveted spot working directly for Shea, who was then an inspector in crime control strategies.
Detective Bureau Investigators went to the unit and reviewed the logs, and noticed that one NYPD car that was supposed to be present was missing — a car assigned to Ruben Duque.
“It was a red flag because at the time, sergeants had no authority to take a car home,” a source said.Investigators then checked Duque’s movements more closely and found that he was spending a lot of time on Staten Island when he was supposedly working on robberies in the subways.In April, the investigators notified Internal Affairs, and pulled all his records for March 2013.
Investigators then pulled six months of NYPD, E-ZPass, phone and payroll records.
An immediate pattern jumped out: Duque was putting in for hours at work when he was on Staten Island. He also fraudulently entered specific case numbers in official NYPD documents to justify earning overtime he hadn’t earned, records show. l On Nov. 18, 2012, Duque said he worked case No. 1024 in Brooklyn from 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m., but made 11 calls on Staten Island from noon to 5 p.m. Investigators found problems with three hours of straight time and six hours of overtime. l On Dec. 2, 2012, he claimed he was handling “robbery pattern No. 40” from 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with four hours of overtime. But his car was captured on the Verrazano Bridge going to Staten Island just before 2 p.m. Investigators concluded he fudged four hours of overtime. l On Dec. 6, 2012, Duque said he worked case No. 859 from 5 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., but he was on the bridge to Staten Island at 11:54 a.m. Investigators concluded he fudged two hours of overtime. l On Jan. 24, 2013, he claimed he worked case No. 1024 from 6 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., but he was caught on the bridge to Staten Island at 2:40 p.m. and made eight calls from the borough after that. l On Feb. 10, 2013, he said he worked from 3:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. on case No. 138 conducting lineups, but he made 23 calls from Staten Island throughout the day.
Investigators reported their findings to the Internal Affairs Bureau. Chief of Detectives Phil Pulaski and Deputy Chief Patrick Conry were also briefed. Investigators recommended to Conry and Pulaski that Duque’s whole unit be examined for similar misconduct. But that didn’t happen, sources said.
On June 26, 2013, just as the investigation came to a head, investigators were shocked to learn that Duque was being promoted to sergeant special assignment. That meant he would get lieutenant’s pay — a base of $122,000 a year.
Under normal protocol, Internal Affairs checks whether cops up for promotion are under investigation before they get moved up, but investigators never got a heads-up, sources said.
Two days later, Ruben Duque shook Commissioner Raymond Kelly’s hand on the auditorium stage at Police Headquarters in lower Manhattan — one of 208 uniformed promotions that day.