A Cincinnati police sergeant who was fired and another officer who retired both lost their police powers last year.
They were paid thousands of dollars for time they didn’t work – and one of them tried to cover it up by backdating and submitting forms; records released Thursday to FOX19 NOW show.
Sgt. LaKisha Gross was “dismissed” December 19, and Officer Darren Sellers retired effective October 23, and his last day with the city was October 31, the documents state.
Both were veteran employees with CPD who worked in Criminal Investigation Section, according to their personnel files. Gross was one of several supervisors, and Sellers was a polygraph examiner.
They were under an internal investigation last year, a probe that began on April 4, 2019, after Lt. Jason Voelkerding, the Major Offenders Unit commander in CIS, filed a complaint of “unethical conduct” with the Internal Investigation Section commander, a copy of the internal investigation report states.
Police Chief Eliot Isaac recommended termination for both on administrative charges of “Dishonesty” and “Failure of Good Behavior” for intentionally misrepresenting timesheets, reporting inaccurate daily lineup reports, and failing to submit time-off requests, police memos show.
Gross was absent from duty without permission a total of 215 hours from May 1, 2018, to April 6, 2019, resulting in an $8,689.96 financial loss to the city, according to a September 5 memo from her administrative hearing officer, Captain Aaron Jones, to the chief.
At one point, another sergeant heard Gross “crush pieces of paper and discard them in the garbage can,” the internal report shows.
The sergeant suspected Gross threw away time off requests rather than turn them in and retrieved the two forms, one for Gross and one for another officer, from the trash and turned those over to Voelkerding, who gave them to internal investigators.
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