Cop forced out after being paid $60K for hours he never worked

An NYPD captain has been forced out of the job after investigators determined he was paid for more than 400 hours — about $60,000 — that he never worked, police sources told the Daily News on Monday.

The now former cop, Jackson Cheng, would not comment, but a source familiar with his case said the 19-year veteran admitted to the charges against him to avoid getting fired and was allowed to retire with his partial pension.

Cheng, 45, said at a department hearing that he was caring for his sick parents during at least some of the time when he should have been working as a detective commander in southern Brooklyn, police said.

NYPD trial judge Paul Gamble recommended against firing Cheng — while noting there was no extraordinary circumstance or hardship to justify him not working when he said he was — saying the officer should be allowed to retire with his pension. Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell made the final decision in the case Nov. 28.

A department prosecutor urged the NYPD to fire Cheng, but the commissioner overrode the recommendation and allowed him to retire.

Cheng was found during the time in question — May 2019 through October 2020 — to have been on the clock but not actually working for 432 hours and 37 minutes, police said. That total includes 196 hours and 34 minutes of overtime, police said.

The source said Cheng had been paid less than $1,200 in overtime — money he agreed to pay back — and that the remaining overtime hours were to be used to take days off in the future. The source also said Cheng contended he worked remotely during the pandemic, though he did not have permission to do so.

The ousted captain also claimed that he was a duty captain, an assignment that forces NYPD officers to work on crime scenes across the five boroughs — not at their desks — during some of the extra hours.

Police said the wrongdoing was discovered during a routine review of overtime, with the investigation then referred to the Internal Affairs Bureau.

Cheng was a member of the Asian Hate Crime Task Force when it was first formed in 2020. A year earlier, he was named vice president when the department’s Asian-American Police Executives Council was created.

Chris Monahan, Cheng’s union rep, noted that the captain will not retire with his full pension and is also losing thousands of dollars in other retirement benefits to which he would have been entitled if he left the force in good standing.