Wansley Walters director of the County Juvenile Assessment Center (JAC) in an email called the hero whistle blower, Michelle Trimble, on Wackenhut's over-billing of the county: "a disgruntled employee."
According to Cedric Windell Johnson, a special agent for the County Inspector General, who has worked for the Inspector General since 2000, said: In December of ‘04 “We had gotten a complaint on our hotline regarding the project manager from Wackenhut who was basically running the security at the JAC, and that there was an allegation of misuse of a lot of time as it related to the contract between Wackenhut and the County."
Johnson said in the 183 page depostion dated February 28, 2008 that Ms. Walters wrote in an email to Susie Torriente, Chief of Staff to George Burgess, that regarding the Scott Hiaasen article printed Sept. 28, 2005 in The Miami Herald, “The lawsuit was filed by a disgruntled employee who used to work here, and I think that she is just throwing anything out that she can.” Wansley Walters further stated:
“Actually, there was a supervisory employee from Wackenhut holding jobs at both the JAC and Parks and Recreation. We turned the issue over to the Inspector General, whose staff did a thorough review of the Wackenhut billing. We are waiting for the final report, but the OIG has met with Wackenhut, and they will be returning money to the County for that employee. The person was ultimately terminated by Wackenhut. Kathy may want to get with Chris Mazzella as well. I think they're about to release their report. Any assistance Kathy (Wilson? Auditor) needs, she will have. Thanks, Wansley”
However, the deposed Investigator Walters disagreed strongly. He said of this email:
"I remember discussing this, but I think Wansley (was) she erred in her statement stating that the OIG -- that we were going to issue a final report. We weren't near a final report, and the information about us thoroughly reviewing those documents, I think she's incorrect in that as well. As far as I was concerned, I don't think we had a thorough review done, because we would not have pursued a more thorough formal investigation of the allegations made by Ms. Trimble until we had gotten an audit. That was the bottom line. The audit would have dictated how much further we would have investigated this. We didn't want to go and start interviewing people with Wackenhut until we had a pretty good idea if we had a major problem; if it was more than David Mayorga; was it other officers, to really lock this thing in until we had an audit done of those time sheets and the logbooks."
By the way, in the 183 page deposition, Investigator Johnson, in instance after instance, found Michelle Trimble’s information credible. Walters did a character assassination (probably fed to her by Wackenhut) of someone trying to do the right thing... someone saving the County countless dollars to boot! By the way, Cathy Jackson is not even doing an audit of the JAC. Her audit, almost 2 years overdue, is only of transit. So this particular issue at JAC: No one is auditing except Wackenhut! We need to break this chummy staff/private business love fest.
More testimony:
3 A. The allegation was that a number of Wackenhut
4 contract officers were receiving hours that they hadn't
5 worked for a specific time frame, so in that case, we
6 would assign our auditors or engage our audit team or
7 even, you know, if we didn't engage an audit, an outside
8 audit entity or our team, in this case, we requested that
9 Wackenhut provide us with some information, but what we
10 really were trying to achieve is to see if we could get
11 some information on actual times worked, comparing the
12 green books, which we didn't know anything about that
13 until, you know, Ms. Trimble told us about the green books
14 during her initial referral of the information to us, and
15 the time sheets that were the formal documentation used to
16 build the account and all, and take that as a lead.
17 Any audit report and then do our
18 investigation -- interviews; any other information we need
19 to gather; background; so on.
20 Q. Was Ms. Trimble ever able to provide you with a
21 single instance where she could show you that a JAC
22 Wackenhut security guard had been paid for time that he
23 had not worked?
24 A. She did.
Also see: Wackenhut: County Dragging its Feet at Best, Hiding Something at Worst. and: Wackenhut: County Sues Itself
3 comments:
Disguntled employee is an easy label that sticks like glue. The woman is a hero, I hope we get some of the money back that she reported to the Inspector General's hotline. What is the hot line for, if not this?
We should give this woman a medal for saving county tax payers from paying people who aren't working. How could staff people say anything but good things about her. I think the staff people should look in the mirror. So the Manager knew about this so he can't say he didn't.
There are disgruntled County employees, and there are County employees who get fed up with the way things too often operate inside the County and try to do something about it. County employees are citizens and taxpayers too and, believe it or not, there are a lot of good ones for whom the job isn't just about a paycheck. If you are a County employee, have a sense of duty and believe in the importance of what you do, it's tough to watch the inefficiencies, ineptitude, and waste that goes on about you and not be in a position to do much about it other than to speak up. And speaking up is even tougher.
As for Wackenhut, anyone who rides the Metrorail should have no problem believing the allegations.
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