New Orleans Police Payroll Under Fire After Fraud Warning
What to know
- New Orleans’ police watchdog warned that weak controls over timekeeping and overtime have left the police department vulnerable to payroll fraud and abuse.
- An Inspector General review found supervisors approved overtime beyond limits, login credentials were shared, and some officers reported being on duty while out of state.
- Despite reforms such as biometric clocks and centralized tracking, investigators say payroll fraud remains widespread as the city faces a budget shortfall and furloughs.
The New Orleans Police Department’s payroll issues are under renewed scrutiny after the Office of Inspector General issued an open letter to Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick warning that weak oversight of timekeeping and overtime has left the department vulnerable to fraud and abuse.
"Strengthening the NOPD’s oversight and management of its timekeeping and overtime is essential to ensuring the Department uses its resources responsibly and in support of public safety," Inspector General Ed Michel said in a statement accompanying the April 29 letter.
The nine-page letter builds on a January report that probed NOPD's failure to budget for or oversee its overtime hours, which were a major contributor to the city's 2025 budget shortfall. In its ongoing investigation, the OIG identified multiple problematic, recurring payroll practices.
Supervisors approved overtime that exceeded policy limits, and officers routinely logged overtime in four-hour blocks rather than the actual time worked. Officers also left their districts while on duty.
"In some cases, OIG investigators determined NOPD officers were not even in Louisiana while reporting to be on duty," the report states.
NOPD supervisors shared their login credentials, allowing officers to enter and approve their own time. Some supervisors allowed officers to work remotely, despite policies limiting such arrangements.
The NOPD did not respond to a request for comment.
NOPD officers Chad Cockerham and Henry Burke were fired and suspended, respectively, this year following payroll investigations. Cockerham was ultimately fired for untruthfulness in connection with a separate incident, public information officer Aaron Looney said. Burke remains on unpaid suspension as he awaits trial on four counts of public payroll fraud and six counts of injuring public records.
Former officer Jeffrey Vappie was indicted last year on charges including wire fraud in connection with about $7,000 in allegedly falsified payroll records submitted during his time spent with former Mayor LaToya Cantrell as her bodyguard.
The department has implemented guardrails including biometric time clocks and a centralized system to track off-duty work and prevent “double-dipping” by logging on-duty and paid detail hours simultaneously. But despite recent firings, arrests and a federal probe in 2021, payroll fraud remains “endemic” within the NOPD, according to whistleblower and UNO chemistry professor Skip Gallagher.
"There are so many methods of cheating," Gallagher said. "The double dipping is gone. But now officers cheat in a different way."
Gallagher estimates that payroll fraud has cost taxpayers millions of dollars for services never rendered — losses the OIG noted are especially significant as more than 50 NOPD civilian employees face furloughs due to the city's budget crisis.
"As the city contends with a budget shortfall, to the degree of furloughing city workers, it is imperative that the NOPD use public resources more efficiently and effectively," Michel wrote.
A previous version of this report incorrectly stated that Burke was fired from NOPD. Burke was suspended after being arrested for payroll fraud.
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