FORT WORTH — Thousands of traffic tickets are now under review in Fort Worth, and well-known state programs like "Click It or Ticket" have been suspended so police can conduct an internal investigation into possible fraud.
Police said four to six officers may have been altering tickets to receive overtime pay. One officer resigned after the allegations were made public.
The Fort Worth Police Department gets more than $500,000 in grants to cover personnel overtime for seat belt and DWI enforcement programs. Those activities were put on hold Wednesday while officials review every traffic ticket written from 2009 until now.
Fort Worth police spokesman Lt. Paul Henderson said some of those tickets were incomplete or altered. "The officers were writing an abundance of tickets during their normal duty hours, then turning those tickets in at a later time," he said. "Using those, they said these are the tickets we wrote during our overtime detail."
So far, the investigation reveals four to six officers were getting paid for overtime for which they may not have been entitled, but every officer is now feeling the pinch.
After meetings with the Texas Department of Transportation and The National Highway Safety Administration, police Chief Jeffrey Halstead suspended four grants. That means no officer will get overtime pay for special programs that crack down on traffic and seat belt laws or DWI enforcement.
"That hurts the citizens, because we don't have that extra layer of coverage," Henderson said. "That's why we want to get this thing wrapped up as soon as we can as far as getting some of these other grants cleared and back on line."
The officers under investigation face internal discipline as well as federal or state charges for fraud and altering government documents.
One officer resigned after finding out about the investigation; the others are still on the force and working their usual beats.
If the department finds probable cause, officers who are targeted by the investigation could be suspended or placed on restricted duty until charges are filed.
E-mail cnorton@wfaa.com
