Defend the spend
Fired chief: CityTime $ boosted DOI
Cash forfeited by the perpetrators of one the biggest frauds ever on city government let the Department of Investigation greatly boost spending on consultants, weapons, and other law enforcement equipment, according to records obtained by the Daily News.
The money — DOI’s reward for the tedious work of uncovering the $500 million CityTime scandal, a failed effort to modernize the city’s payroll technology — arrived at the agency in July 2013 in the form of a hefty check for $27.4 million.
Over the next three years, DOI dropped $1.4 million on a fleet of vehicles, spent $1.6 million on “consultants,” and purchased a catalog of law enforcement accessories that included night vision goggles, bulletproof vests and an $86,000 firearms training simulator.
Most, though not all, of this spending occurred while Mark Peters was commissioner of DOI, from 2014 through November, when Mayor de Blasio fired him, alleging that he’d overstepped his authority in trying to merge an independent schools investigator into his agency.
In an interview Friday, Peters defended his former department’s spend down of the CityTime kitty, which began under his predecessor, Rose Gill Hearn.
Peters says much CityTime spending was related to his expansion of DOI by bringing the city hospitals’ inspector general under his wing and increasing oversight of the city Housing Authority. Another major factor was his expansion of a DOI program that allowed 147 agency staffers to be trained as peace officers, who are allowed to carry firearms.
As part of this effort, DOI created its own “peace officer academy” and spent $105,586 on ammunition, $39,574 on “tactical training,” $39,350 to rent a firing range, $24,182 on firearms and $54,714 on “night vision equipment,” according to records for fiscal years 2015 through 2017, the last year available.
In fiscal 2015, the agency bought an $86,750 firearms training simulator, a video-game like device that lets officers practice shooting without using a real weapon. In fiscal 2016, DOI paid $9,600 to hire a psychologist to screen peace officer candidates, officials said Friday.
“We were expanding DOI overall and we were doing a lot of work that required well-trained peace officers to be out in the field,” Peters said. “We were expanding the work we were doing out at Rikers, we were doing drug work at Health & Hospitals, we were expanding the work we were doing at NYCHA.”
Peters said the training and equipment were necessary “so we can do the job well and we can do the job safely…It’s not responsible to send them out in the field without substantial training and equipment. If you don’t do that (training), people get hurt.”
Peters’ spending of forfeiture money on vehicles also exceeded that of his predecessor. In fiscal 2013, Hearn spent $180,000 on vehicles. That compares with Peters’ spending of $726,000 in fiscal 2015 and $659,000 in fiscal 2017.
Peters said he spent more money on vehicles because he had more staff.
The CityTime forfeiture windfall in 2013 was a serious increase over the prior two years, when DOI had about $6 million to $7 million in forfeiture funds to spend. In the last full fiscal year before the CityTime money arrived, fiscal 2013, then-DOI Commissioner Gill Hearn spent about $2 million in forfeiture funds.
Forfeiture money is supposed to be spent on law enforcement-related expenses, but the interpretation of that is fairly broad. Often agencies spend the money on everything from equipment to training to travel to employee overtime.
For example, in fiscal 2013 — her last full fiscal year as commissioner — Hearn spent $27,131 on fitness equipment and $26,089 on “law enforcement awards.”
During fiscal year 2014 — which ran from July 2013 to June 2014 — Hearn oversaw spending until spring 2014, when Peters took over the agency.
That was the first year the City Time windfall was available to the department. DOI that year spent $6.5 million in CityTime money — more than triple its spending the previous year.
It steered $2 million to the NYPD, its frequent partner on numerous corruption investigations. After that, no more money went to One Police Plaza.
Under Peters, DOI spent between $3.6 million and $4.9 million each year from the forfeiture kitty through fiscal 2017, records show. Most of that came from CityTime.
Late Friday Diane Struzzi, a spokeswoman for the new DOI Commissioner, Margaret Garnett, said she and her team “are reviewing all of DOI’s policies and procedures, including forfeiture spending and the agency’s peace officer program.”