Deputies Made Thousands From Super Bowl Duty

Written by Elgin Jones   

FORT LAUDERDALE – A little-known off-duty work program that was operated out of the Broward Sheriff’s Office netted an exclusive circle of deputies and supervisors thousands of dollars in extra pay during last year’s Super Bowl, a South Florida Times investigation has found.
BSO provided hundreds of deputies for the Super Bowl, but the NFL Super Bowl VIP Detail, as it was called internally, was operated separately from the normal off-duty work program and it was not managed by the Office of Special Detail. No one is saying who authorized it.
BSO has not released the required forms that will show who knew about it.  A Sheriff’s spokesman acknowledged that BSO personnel worked the Super Bowl VIP detail last February and defended the operation.
“The operation I believe you are referring to was to provide drivers for NFL executives unfamiliar with the area,” Jim Leljedal, BSO’s director of media relations, said in an e-mail responding to questions about the program.
“The NFL provided the vehicles and covered all related expenses,” Leljedal said. “Deputies took vacation time to participate. This was requested by the NFL and is something they expect at every Super Bowl location. They asked BSO to provide people who were willing to spend their vacation time handling these chores.”
NFL officials did not return several phone calls or respond to e-mails seeking comment.  Edward L. DuBois III, president of Miami-based Investigators Inc., a private investigative firm that provides security services to the NFL, referred e-mailed questions to Milt Ahlerich, head of NFL Security. He did not respond to e-mailed questions.
Detail assignments involve off-duty deputies who earn extra money for working at private firms or governmental agencies to provide a law enforcement presence. The Super Bowl VIP detail was organized and managed by Col. Rick Frey, executive director of BSO’s Department of Law Enforcement.
“The operations were administered by the Super Bowl committee and the public safety committee and me, in keeping with the way that the NFL manages Super Bowls every year in every city they select,” Frey said in an e-mailed response to questions about the program.
Rodney Barreto, who served as chairman of the Super Bowl Host Committee, said the committee had no such involvement.
“It was BSO,” Barreto said. “We didn’t arrange it or pay them. Everything we did was in-kind, where no money changed hands.” 
The lucrative NFL detail opportunities were not disclosed or offered to most rank-and-file deputies. The operation also allowed at least one person, Sheriff Al Lamberti’s teenage son, to gain access to the Super Bowl by giving him security credentials and listing him as part of the security operation, the investigation found.
Deputies were required to be in uniform, wear their service weapons and carry radios. BSO had no signed contract with the NFL for the operation and some deputies drove their squad cars during the assignments. BSO was not reimbursed for any of it.
Because BSO has not released any records related to the VIP operation, it remains unclear how much the operation cost taxpayers. In violation of BSO policies, deputies were paid directly by the NFL. They earned as much as $1,000 per day, according to an estimate by a source closely affiliated with the NFL and the Super Bowl.
Some also received tips, Super Bowl access and signed NFL memorabilia, according to sources.  Frey neither confirmed nor denied the $1,000 a day estimate, but said no BSO personnel received any Super Bowl passes or keepsakes.
Broward County conducted an audit last March of the BSO’s Office of Special Detail which normally handles off-duty work assignments for deputies. That office was not informed of the VIP detail operation.
“During our interviews, they talked about the Super Bowl but never mentioned that any of that detail work was done as part of any separate operation. It was our understanding that everything was done through their detail office,” said Broward County Auditor Evan A. Lukic.
“It would have been appropriate for them to make us aware of it but, without knowing how they were paid or what was done with the money, there is no way to determine what impact that information would have had on our audit.”
BSO conducted its own internal audit of the regular off-duty work program last October and that audit uncovered numerous problems. There were instances of some deputies working details while they were supposed to be on their regular jobs. Some did so while on sick leave and some while they were off work due to on-the-job injuries and receiving worker’s compensation pay.
The practice is termed double-dipping.
That audit’s findings prompted an ongoing criminal investigation by the Broward State Attorney’s Office. Also, the Florida Retirement System is reviewing pension contributions made in conjunction with the questionable detail pay. If fraud is discovered, it could lead to the employee losing pension benefits.
It is unclear if the program was shut down after the Super Bowl, but the fact that it was not made public or disclosed to auditors has raised concern in some quarters.
“My impression of the sheriff is that he is a straight shooter but if this was a clandestine operation that was kept from auditors, then he needs to request an investigation by an outside agency,” said Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein.

Probe of BSO Off-Duty Work Program Escalates
FORT LAUDERDALE — A Broward State Attorney’s Office review of the Broward Sheriff’s Office off-duty detail work program may turn into a full scale criminal investigation, the South Florida Times has learned.
Tim Donnelly, who heads the SAO’s Special Investigations Unit that handles public corruption cases, and his staff are gathering information from BSO on the matter, said State Attorney’s Office spokesperson Ron Ishoy.
“When that's done, he'll assign the prosecutor, who is working on finishing several other cases right now,” Ishoy said.
BSO, which is one of the largest fully accredited law enforcement agencies in the country, said it will cooperate with the investigation and provide whatever information is needed or requested.
Jim Leljedal, director of media relations with the sheriff’s office, said he was unaware that a prosecutor would be assigned to the case.
“That’s news to me,” Leljedal said. “I mean, I wouldn’t be the first to know. But we always assist them in whatever they want to do.”
Off-duty detail assignments are given to off-duty deputies who earn extra money to provide security, crowd control or a general law enforcement presence at private firms or government agencies. BSO’s program is run by its Office of Special Detail which underwent an internal audit earlier this year. That audit turned up numerous problems and even more questions about its operations.
“Keep in mind this was our audit. I don’t know of any other department that has done this,” Leljedal said. “We worked over 300,000 hours of special details and the problems that we found were in less than one half of one percent of them.”
The audit found instances of some deputies working details while they were supposed to be at work at regular jobs. In some cases, deputies worked details while they were off work due to on-the- job injuries and receiving worker’s compensation pay. Some deputies performed off-duty work while on sick leave, the audit found. The practice is termed double-dipping and it prompted a review by prosecutors.
A SIMILAR CASE
The announcement that the State Attorney’s Office plans to assign a prosecutor to the BSO case is coming less than a week after Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents arrested a Golden Beach police officer on several charges, including double-dipping while working off-duty details.
In that case FDLE agents charged Sgt. Lynn Dean Peters, 45, of Ft. Lauderdale, with one count of organized scheme to defraud, one count of grand theft, insurance fraud and 11 counts of official misconduct. Peters is charged with working off-duty details while on duty. He also allegedly falsified records related to his detail work. FDLE is not monitoring the BSO case, a spokesman said.
Leljedal said BSO has tightened its rules to minimize the chances for abuse.
“A new policy has been written and distributed. The controls are tighter. The policy has been revised and there less likelihood of abuse,” Leljedal said.
Officials at the state attorney’s office would not discuss the scope of their investigation. However it may include an anonymous complaint sent to BSO Internal Affairs alleging fraud by deputies when they work details escorting funerals. The complaint alleges supervisors pressured a deputy to falsify the number of hours he worked escorting funerals and, when he refused, he was no longer allowed to escort funerals.
Another issue prosecutors may probe is the separate detail program run from BSO headquarters in 2010 during Super Bowl week called the NFL VIP Detail. Col. Rick Frey has told the South Florida Times that he organized the program and that it was approved but would not say who approved it.
“I also want to restate to you that Col. Frey not (sic) personally organize the NFL VIP employment,” Leljedal said in e-mail sent to the South Florida Times this week. “His role was as co-chair of the entire public safety committee and there is no issue with how the security operation was handled.”
Among other things, the Super Bowl detail program listed Sheriff Al Lamberti’s teenage son on official documents along with deputies, giving an indication he was a sheriff’s department employee. The documents also stated he was part of the BSO security team assigned to the Super Bowl. The documents in question got the teenager a security clearance and credentials, which gave him unrestricted access to the game and Sun Life Stadium.
The South Florida Times has made several public records requests to the sheriff’s office for those documents, without success.
“There are no public records relating to the people listed,” Leljedal responded. “Those people took time off and worked for the NFL for a few days.”
BSO did provide the names of nine people who worked the VIP detail, but did not provide any documents.
When asked who completed documents that indicated the sheriff’s son was on the BSO security team, Leljedal said, “It is not clear who listed Nick Lamberti.”

U.S. companies forced to accept 50-50 agreements

Click HERE for full photo coverage. By Dr. Jerome Corsi China is demanding that U.S. companies wrap parts of their worldwide operations into new joint venture companies in which Chinese interests own 50 percent, as a condition of doing business with China, the Wall Street Journal reported. This fulfills a prediction I made in my book "America for Sale," in which I argued that increasingly China would seek to own assets as a condition of doing business with American companies and as a requirement if the U.S. government expected China to continue buying U.S. debt. The Wall Street Journal reported that General Electric is finalizing plans for a 50-50 joint venture with a Chinese military-jet maker to produce avionics, the electronic components of aircraft. In a similar deal, General Motors established a joint venture this year with SAIC Motor Corp., its longtime Chinese partner, to produce and sell micro-vans in emerging markets including India and Southeast Asia. "To make the GE deal happen, GE Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt made an extraordinary concession, agreeing to fold into the venture all of GE's existing world-wide business in nonmilitary avionics," the Wall Street Journal wrote. "GM, in its deal, contributed technology, its manufacturing facilities in India and the use of its Chevrolet brand name in that market." Along with the joint ventures, the participating Chinese companies get the full benefit of U.S. technological advances, which the Chinese are then able to use in other non-related business applications. Ultimately, the Chinese intend to have Chinese corporations, aided by cheap labor and abundant government financing, dominate the international business areas that China is today entering through 50-50 joint ventures with U.S. companies. China leases oil rights in Texas Last October, China announced the state-owned Chinese energy giant CNOOC is buying a multi-million dollar stake in 600,000 acres of South Texas oil and gas fields. Reporting the story, Monica Hatcher of the Houston Chronicle suggested China was "testing the political waters for further energy expansion into U.S. energy reserves." That China is buying U.S. oil and natural gas rights in the continental United States will strike millions of Americans as paradoxical, especially since the U.S. continues to be a net importer of approximately 60 percent of the oil consumed in the United States. The Houston Chronicle reported China paid $2.2 billion for a one-third stake in Chesapeake Energy assets, with CNOCC laying a claim to a share of the energy resources in South Texas that have the potential to produce up to half a million barrels of oil per day. The Houston Chronicle reported that as part of this deal, CNOCC agreed to pay approximately $1.1 billion for a share of Chesapeake's assets in the Eagle Ford, described as a broad oil and gas formation that runs from the southwest of San Antonio to the Mexican border. The Houston Chronicle also reported that the deal with China could create as many as 20,000 jobs in the United States, as well as provide the capital Chesapeake needs to increase its rig count in South Texas from 10 rigs to 42 rigs by the end of 2012. Five years ago, the Bush administration blocked China on grounds of national security concerns from a $18.4 billion deal in which China planned to purchase California-based Unocal Corp. Today, China has the cash, U.S. corporations need the business and the Obama administration has no plans to reverse the debtor relationship in which China has become one of the U.S. government's needed lenders. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jerome R. Corsi received a Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. He is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling books THE OBAMA NATION: LEFTIST POLITICS AND THE CULT OF PERSONALITY and the co-author of UNFIT FOR COMMAND: SWIFT BOAT VETERANS SPEAK OUT AGAINST JOHN KERRY. He is also the author of AMERICA FOR SALE, THE LATE GREAT U.S.A., and WHY ISRAEL CAN'T WAIT. Currently, Dr. Corsi is a Senior Managing Director in the Financial Services Group at Gilford Securities as well as a senior staff writer for WorldNetDaily.com. [Full story...]l

US Park Chief Whistle-Blower Gets Her Job Back

WASHINGTON  — A federal appeals board has issued a definitive ruling restoring Teresa Chambers as Chief of the U.S. Park Police by the end of the month, according to the decision released by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), who has represented Chief Chambers. The decision ended a multi-year legal drama that revolved around whether federal civil servants could be fired for telling the truth.
The Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), which hears civil service appeals, found that the evidence against Chief Chambers was weak and the motive of political appointees to retaliate was high. The MSPB ruled that no further proceedings were necessary and issued the following directive:

“Accordingly, we ORDER the agency to cancel the appellant’s December 5, 2003 placement on administrative leave, cancel the appellants July 10, 2004 removal, and restore her effective July 10, 2004….The agency must complete this action no later than 20 days after the date of this decision.”
While it is possible that the Interior Department may appeal this MSPB ruling, that appears unlikely because 1) Chief Chambers has won two consecutive appeals before the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which would hear any further challenge; and 2) the MSPB rulings on the failure of Interior to meet basic evidentiary burdens would be very difficult to overturn.
“This is a wonderful ruling, not only for Chief Chambers but for thousands who believe that honesty is part of public service,” stated PEER Senior Counsel Paula Dinerstein, who argued the appeals for Chief Chambers. “The wheels of justice turn slowly but eventually they do turn.”
Chief Chambers was put on administrative leave and stripped of her badge and gun in the wake of an interview she gave to the Washington Post in late 2003 concerning how reduced force levels and higher patrol demands were affecting the security mission of the U.S. Park Police, the oldest uniformed constabulary in federal service, established by President Washington. Bush political appointees in the National Park Service and its parent agency, the Interior Department, cooked up a series of administrative charges against Chief Chambers. After leaving her on administrative leave for several months under orders not to speak to the media, Interior finally decided to terminate Chief Chambers in July 2004.
One by one the charges against her have been dismissed for lack of evidence, with the final four charges being tossed today by the three-member MSPB, with two Obama-appointed members, including the chair.
However, the last two years of litigation occurred under the Obama administration which, to the surprise of many, showed no interest in resolving Chief Chambers’ or other holdover whistleblower cases.