The County Sheriffs of Colorado (CSOC) was recently caught using $688,000 in government grant funds for unauthorized purposes. The grant was to go toward creating a system to notify victims that offenders’ place or terms of incarceration were being changed.
Instead, sweatshirts and meals for spouses were among the items improperly billed against the federal grant.
But not to worry. CSOC executive director Chris Johnson assures us that “there’s no criminal intent.”
After 40 years as a criminal defense lawyer, I have more than a passing acquaintance with that excuse. My clients have uttered it often, usually at their sentencing hearing. But I cannot recall hearing it as a synonym for, “Oops. Now let’s move on.”
And I can tell you, the phrase “there’s no criminal intent “runs out of persuasive power way before the misspent amount reaches $688,000.
But then, citizens using that excuse seldom wear badges.
The CSOC excuse is that the unpermitted use of $688,000 was merely a series of accounting errors. Kind of like “the dog ate my homework,” only turned inside out to “the dog wrote my homework.”
The specific purpose of the federal grant was quite narrow: Develop a statewide program that tracks custody status of offenders and notifies victims when a prisoner is moved to prison, released on parole or discharged from his sentence.
You would think any accountant could view the sherrifs’ expenditures and ask, “What does this have to do with the purpose of the grant?” Better yet, what kind of cop thought it was OK to bill against this grant the expenditures on promotional sweatshirts and T- shirts and meals for spouses?
It takes a a pile of improper receipts to make much of a difference, let alone hundreds of thousands of dollars of misused government money. And pretty early in the billing process, the individual knows exactly what he or she is doing. And, if the individual sheriff made a mistake, how did so many county sheriffs’ departments miss the “error” so often? You don’t get to $688,000 of bad bills without lots of cops turning in lots of receipts for lots of improper purposes. And lots of bosses blessing the improper billing.
Colorado prosecutors have pointed this out to juries countless times — and for a lot less money.
The issue is not the wasted money. The damage was worse. Once again, the perception is that people wearing the badges of law enforcement will violate the law — and nobody will do anything about it.
Larry Pozner practices criminal defense and commercial litigation at Reilly Pozner, LLP. These views are his alone. He was a Colorado Voices columnist in 2005.
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