Internal Police Audit Nearing Completion

Clarkstown Police Chief Michael Sullivan said the internal audit of the department’s 2012 overtime is almost complete. He said the department’s number one priority is to finish it and submit it to town officials.

We’re pretty much done with ours,” said Sullivan. “We’re going to be releasing it at the workshop meeting on the 23^rd.  I’m going to bring the whole team over that investigated and that did the audit to go over it and answer questions.”

On Thursday, he said the audit of 702 instances of overtime was not fully complete because there was still two issues of overtime that need further verification that the hours were worked and required further investigation.

“The vast majority of overtime we were able to verify right now,” he said.

Four lieutenants conducted the internal audit and were directed by Captain Anthony Ovchinnikoff. In order to confirm that each and every officer was where he or she had said they were during the overtime period, Sullivan said the audit necessitated obtaining information and written records from numerous independent sources such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, District Attorney’s Office, private law firms, court records and EZ Pass logs.  

Next week the police department will share its audit with the town’s auditor Korn Rosenbaum LLP of Pomona who will review it. Sullivan said the auditor will review the department’s policies and procedures and will select instances of overtime that they want to review the paperwork for.

The move to conduct an internal audit came about in February after residents questioned the resignation of Police Officer William Sherwood over a four-hour discrepancy in overtime and the total amount of overtime paid by the department last year.  Several citizens requested an external independent audit of the department’s overtime costs of approximately $3.8 million in 2012.

In March, Councilmember Frank Borelli announced the town’s auditor would review the police internal audit and conduct a separate in depth review of police overtime after completion of its yearly review of the town’s books.

“The whole purpose of this audit was to basically show the public that we are running this department correctly and honestly,” Sullivan said previously. “ So we definitely need to release the results of the audit. Whether the actual report will be released or not I want to run that by the town attorney first to make sure we are not violating any privacy rules to the officers.”