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SCHENECTADY : Some police OT no pension boost
Ruling is news to city officials
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
When city police officers watch over St. Anthony’s Festa or close streets for a road race, they’re technically not on the clock.
   They’re getting paid by the city, but the city is being reimbursed by the private entity that requested officers for security.
   Thus, that money should not count toward their income for pension purposes, the state says.
   The ruling came as news to Schenectady payroll workers, who have always reported that income as part of each officer’s overtime earnings. That means it counted toward their pensions.
   The state bases each officer’s pension on his or her income, including overtime. While a few hundred dollars from one road race is unlikely to make much of a difference, some officers can rack up much more by volunteering for many overtime jobs in their final years of work. Only the last three years of income are used to make the final pension calculation.
   City Finance Commissioner Deb DeGenova said the city always intended to follow the state’s pension rules. The city didn’t know that some overtime didn’t count toward pensions, she said. Payroll employees have now asked the state for an official ruling on the topic, she added.
   “If we receive a guidance from the comptroller to report a piece of a salary in a particular way, we would certainly follow that,” DeGenova said.
   State officials said the rule was clear-cut.
   “Private duty OT work is not pensionable,” said Nikki Jones, deputy press secretary for the state comptroller’s office.
   But city Public Safety Commissioner Wayne Bennett said he’d never heard that. “Where is this memo?” he asked. “And how come, when the state sends auditors, they don’t write it up? Something is amiss.”
   Schenectady was audited by the state in 2012 and the issue wasn’t mentioned in the final report.
   Bennett said the city is regularly reimbursed for police patrols during the Stockade-athon, church festas and other events.
   “Anybody that requests police presence, over and beyond what we would provide, does have to reimburse the salary and benefits,” he said.

Quoted from MOONGLOW

But will the finance director adjust down the wrongfully credited amount to the retirement fund?

Quoted from visitor

A couple of things.  First, I did not think those details were to be included. Second, the details are only relevant if they were used in pension calculation.  Often younger officers use the details to supplement their income well before they are in the years when their earnings are being used to calculate their salary.  

It will be interesting to ascertain how the amounts have impacted pension to date.  Most police pensions are determined when officers are working in non-uniformed assignments, and they typically do not work the details at that point in their careers.

Last year, the total for these details was $32,200.  Any officer who was not in the three year window for pension calculation would not benefit from Finance Department's lack of compliance.

Bennett does make an interesting point - how does teh audit miss this?

Quoted from CICERO

A few more questions.

Who reported that the private police security was being counted toward pensions?  I could not find that in the article.  Was this a whistleblower working for the city, or was the comptroller just randomly checking this accounting practice in Schenectady?  Is this a statewide problem?  Do other municipalities around the state account the same as Schenectady?  How does Rotterdam account for the private police security service?

Quoted from TakingItBack

In fact why are they even allowed to do it at all?  The private company should have to hire from a private sector security firm.  It isnt the city responsibility.

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Illegal Police Department Activity Threaten to Bankrupt Counties Nationwide
Tuesday, May 14, 2013 8:09
0

The Truth Behind The News
susanne_posel_news_ police-state-002Susanne Posel
Occupy Corporatism
February 7, 2013

Local police departments (LPDs) across the nation are incorporated as specialized non-profits. Most LPDs are known to the Secretary of State in their respective state as an association which gives the impression to the average citizen that this is a union. However this is not the case.
The LPDs are contracted by the City Council to preform police services and securitize the city they are hired in. This is the exchange of a local government hiring a private security firm to stabilize the local population and generate revenue for the city through tickets, arrests and recording infractions. However, this does not include upholding local laws, as the County Sheriff’s Office is elected to take charge of.
The problem with this system is that the LPDs, being corporations, are subject to corporate law. And corporations fall into dissolution (i.e. the termination of the corporation) for various reasons quite often. When it is the LPD that dissolves; this becomes a question of legal authority over the citizens by the hired private security firm known as the LPD.
Corporations that dissolve are not allowed by law to conduct business. These same rules apply to the LPD that is actually a corporation hired by the local government or city council to preform police services.
For example, in the State of Oregon, over 12 LPDs are in dissolution. On the Secretary of State website, when a LPD is dissolved it is classified as “INA” or inactive. This includes LPDs in the following cities:
• Beaverton
• Canby
• Charleston
• Eugene
• Gresham
• King County
• Lake Oswego
• Lebanon
• Portland
• Sherwood
• Weston
According to corporate law, if a corporation dissolves, it must withdraw as a business entity. This means that once the LPD is dissolved, they cannot continue to perform police services for the city in which they were hired.
And in fact, should this be brought to the public, it might be common place (as it is in the State of Oregon) that LPDs are in dissolution and not legally allowed to conduct police services because they lack legal authority as a dissolved corporation.
It also stands that the local governments that are privy to this information would be involved in not only egregious corruption but are knowingly misleading the citizens of their towns and cities. Once the LPD is dissolved, from the date of dissolution, any arrest, ticket, or police service preformed is now an illegal act. It is tantamount to a citizen impersonating a police officer which as serious legal ramifications.
Should citizens become aware of this fact in their city – that their LPD is a corporation that has dissolved and is continuing to operate as if they have legal right to do so – there would be justified legal recourse for every citizen who had been arrested, jailed, forced to pay a ticket of any kind and forced to appear in municipal court under those circumstances (including court costs, attorney’s fees and fees attributed by the court).
In 2012, Louis F. Quijas, Assistant Secretary of the Office for State and Local Law Enforcement (OSLLE), for the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explained the purpose of the OSLLE as a front “office that provided coordination and partnership with state, local, and tribal law enforcement.”
The OSLLE was recommended by the 9/11 Commission. It was created to “lead the coordination of DHS-wide policies relating to state, local, and tribal law enforcement’s role in preventing acts of terrorism and to serve as the primary liaison between non-Federal law enforcement agencies across the country and the Department.”
Intelligence is disseminated through OSLLE to LPDs or “non-Federal law enforcement partners” to keep information flowing through initiatives such as the “If You See Something, Say Something™”, the Blue Campaign, the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI), and the Department’s efforts in Countering Violent Extremism.
OSLLE consistently works with LPDs on education, actionable information, operations and intelligence for the purpose of their part in the operations of the DHS with regard to keeping “our homeland safe”.
OSLLE also works as a liaison between LPDs to maintain DHS leadership and considerations of “issues, concerns, and requirements of state, local, and tribal law enforcement during budget, grant, and policy development processes.”
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) upholds relationships with LPDs for the purposes of and participation with National Preparedness Grant Program that began this year.
To ensure that local police departments continue to meet the requirements of training from DHS, officers regularly attend the DHS Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia.
LPDs are focused through OSLLE and DHS to “remain vigilant and to protect our communities from all threats, whether terrorism or other criminal activities” as DHS expands its control over local law enforcement and the communities they oversee.
As stated in the DHS directive from the Office for State and Local Law Enforcement (SLLE), the assistant Secretary for SLLE has “the primary official responsible for leading the coordination of Department-wide policies related to the role of state, tribal, and local law enforcement in preventing, preparing for, protecting against, and responding to natural disasters, acts of terrorism and other man- made disasters within the US.”
This directive also sets guidelines of advocacy for DHS by the LPDs. Authorization of DHS to take over LPDs is given in Title 6 of the United States Code, Section 607, “Terrorism prevention”.
In 2008, the Bureau of Justice Statistics stated that LPD “make up more than two-thirds of the 18,000 state and local law enforcement agencies in the US” which translates to an estimated 12,501 law enforcement agencies. Of those LPDs, there are more than 461,000 sworn officers.
Last year President Obama signed an executive order (EO) that created the White House Homeland Security Partnership Council and Steering Committee which tied DHS to local partnerships, federal and private institutions “to address homeland security challenges.”
Members of the Steering Committee include:
• Department of State
• Department of US Treasury
• Department of Defense
• Department of Justice
• Department of Transportation
• Department of Veterans Affairs
• The Federal Bureau of Investigations
In 2011, Congress encouraged private sector “police companies” to replace law enforcement on the State and local level by coercing a new police protection insurance that would tack on a fee to citizens for the use of “police protection”.
This move was justified by having citizens pay for the police to be called to scenes as a “communal service” that is contractual just as any other service or good is paid for. As a customer, the citizen would tell 911 dispatch their insurance information for payment purposes to be billed after the police were deployed to the scene, or services were rendered.
Turning LPDs into private security firms that provide services to the public was the scheme behind privatizing law enforcement.
Under state government contract, private security firms preform law enforcement services. With legislative bodies on both the state and Congressional level supporting this change, private corporations enter into contractual agreements with city councils to provide armed security patrol. Just as a rent-a-cop is hired to secure private property, local police departments are masked rent-a-cops that were hired by local government to secure their city.
This fact has been hidden from public scrutiny and has added to the blending of social perception of what the police are and what they do so that police services are able to function without question. At the same time, citizens are expected to pay fees for these “services” that were once inherent to life in a structured town or city.
In early 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a report entitled “Homeland Security and Intelligence: Next Steps in Evolving the Mission” which outlined in part on how to redirect efforts of the federal government from international terrorism toward home-grown terrorists and build a DHS-controlled police force agency that would control all cities and towns through the use of local police departments.
DHS maintains that “the threat grows more localized” which necessitates the militarization of local police in major cities in the US and the training of staff from local agencies to make sure that oversight is restricted to the federal government.
Private corporations have been parading as public servants policing cities and towns across America without the knowledge of the average citizen for quite some time. Although they wear the same badges as LPDs of the past, these private security firms are not there to uphold peace or enforce any laws and city ordinances. Just like any other corporation, they seek out opportunities to collect revenue for the benefit of the city that hired them.
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