Main Stream Press Finally Picks Up CMPD Audit Story

More than a year ago Cedar Posts was hearing of a CMPD panic to "true up, correct and clean up" CMPD personal files.  CMPD was in mode because it seemed they mistakenly tossed a ton of Officer records in the CMPD dumpster.

CP prior posts here and here.

Cedar Posts first reported that dozens of CMPD Officers were "ordered" to provide new finger print cards in September of last year.

After reading Cedar Posts Blog as well as numerous CP tweets via twitter a couple of Charlotte's "Main Stream Media" started asking questions. But CMPD's public information officers as well as Department spokesman Rob Tufano denied that there was any issue regarding missing files.

Time and time again when more irregularities cropped up CMPD's Tufano would deny that there was an aduit underway or that there was truth to the reports of missing paperwork or missing criminal records of active officers.

At times telling one reporter to ignor crazy rumors started by Cedar Posts.

City News Watch picked up the story in October and even went as far as making a FOI request regarding the missing documents, only to be stonewalled by CMPD.

Well at last the truth, abiet with a good amount of CMPD spin has been reported by the Charlotte Observer:

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police are trying to reconcile paperwork errors after an audit by a state agency found deficiencies in certification and training records of nearly 100 officers.

Errors found by the N.C. Criminal Justice Standards Division include major and minor deficiencies in the paperwork for some 88 officers, about 5 percent of the department’s nearly 1,800 sworn officers. For some officers, past criminal charges were missing on several forms. On others, the results of drug screens were not present. Others are missing simpler things like a signature or a notary’s stamp.

Still, police leaders and the commission say most of the deficiencies were paperwork-related.
“The state hasn’t pulled their certification and hasn’t indicated that we need to pull (the officers) from the street,” said Deputy Chief Katrina Graue, who oversees administrative services.
 
The N.C. Judicial Standards Commission directed questions about the deficiencies to Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman for N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper.

In an e-mail, Talley said “The majority of the discrepancies identified have been corrected and (Criminal Justice) Standards staff are working with CMPD to resolve the remaining discrepancies. … It is not unusual for an agency to have some errors in its certification paperwork. However, the Commission and its staff are concerned whenever officers are working without being properly certified.”

At the Observer’s request, the Police Department provided the deficiencies reported in the audit, though the names of the officers involved were blocked out.

According to the audit:

• Every Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer was currently certified with a duty firearm and has completed mandated in-service training.

• 41 officers were deficient in some manner with mandated in-service training that was required in previous years.

• 47 officers were deficient in certification requirements.

• 21 officers had deficiencies related to the incorrect reporting of criminal charges. Some of the deficiencies reflected inconsistencies such as charges mentioned on some forms submitted by an applicant but not other forms.

The audit began last July, when staff at the Criminal Justice Standards Division realized three police officers on CMPD’s rolls were not on the agency’s list of certified officers.

The agency dug deeper into those three files, and “believed that it would be beneficial to the department for Standards Division staff to conduct a cursory audit of CMPD’s files,” according to a letter written to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Rodney Monroe.

Starting last September, the division reviewed officers’ certification files. “Numerous issues were discovered in this expanded review, and the decision was made by the division to audit the files of all sworn officers,” the letter says.

The division spent the first seven months of this year reviewing the department’s files – a total of 1,792 officers.

Members of the Charlotte City Council’s Community safety committee members polled by the Observer at Wednesday’s community safety committee meeting said they had not been notified of the audit.

CP's Take: With a department as large as Charlotte's there are bound to be some slip ups, files that become lost, paperwork that is misplaced.  But when the department repeatedly lies about an ongoing investigation it makes everything else the department does or says suspect.

CP Bonus: Sad that Charlotte's Main Stream Media is played by CMPD.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/10/21/3613218/state-audit-finds-cmpd-paperwork.html#storylink=cpy