Early review points to Cops for Kids problems

We’re still sorting through the hundreds of pages of records retrieved yesterday from the police department’s Cops for Kids files. The work to fully analyze the data has just begun. But this much already seems apparent:

There were no financial controls regulating Cops for Kids. There was no town oversight, and no one making sure money was deposited and spent as it was supposed to be. So the accuracy and thoroughness of the record keeping is questionable at best.

That said, it appears that very little money from Cops for Kids has been spent since at least 2001 on needy children, seniors or families, which is the stated purpose of the organization. There are a couple of receipts in an 8-year period from grocery and retail stores, but many of them lack documentation of who the purchases benefited. There are plenty of records of payments to hotels, but none of them are in Mooresville or anywhere in the Lake Norman area. There are no records of payments to power companies or landlords, as one might expect to find in the financial records of an organization that claims to offer emergency assistance to people who, as explained by the Cops for Kids website, are in need of “basic necessities” as a result of “unfortunate circumstances.” (By the way, as of Monday afternoon, the Cops for Kids page has been removed from the police department’s website.)

Among the many documents that the Report obtained from Police Chief John Crone yesterday, there were no guidelines or rules governing how needy individuals and families can apply for assistance, nor any criteria to determine who is eligible to receive such assistance. There were no applications that could be filled out to request such assistance, nor any completed applications seeking such assistance. There were no materials — pamphlets, flyers, brochures, letters — to help publicize the assistance Cops for Kids purports to offer.

Also not present in the Cops for Kids files were articles of incorporation, by-laws, lists of officers or directors, meeting minutes, annual budgets, annual tax filings, or annual audits — the sorts of documents one would expect to find in the files of a legitimate charity.

What the records do show is that thousands of dollars in Cops for Kids money has been spent every year since 2001 to send members of two groups of children called the "mayor’s youth council" and the police "explorers" -- along with police and public officials and their wives -- to places such as New York City; Washington D.C.; Gatlinburg, TN; Pennsylvania; Niagara Falls; and Atlanta. (As an aside, I'm not sure at this time of the criteria for inclusion in the mayor's youth council or the explorers program, but I can tell you that included in the youth council are several privileged children who incidentally have attended several trips funded by Cops for Kids.)

Does that mean that Cops for Kids has not benefited children and youth in the community? Not at all. In fact, every year, Cops for Kids holds a “Breakfast with Santa” event for area children and hands out t-shirts, donuts and milk. Cops for Kids has also contributed $500 a year to the Rotary S.T.A.R.S. program for at-risk children in the Mooresville Graded School District; it has sponsored area baseball and softball teams and has donated $100 a year in recent years to a non-profit basketball camp. Cops for Kids has contributed money to Mooresville High School’s band boosters, it has donated $50 to Lake Norman Christian Outreach, and it has helped sponsor a “block party” hosted by Broad Street United Methodist Church.

But for the thousands of dollars that the organization brings in every year – it collected $24,920 from the 2007 golf tournament alone, in addition to thousands of dollars in individual and business donations – very little is given to underprivileged or needy children in the community, and a whole lot is put back into the annual golf tournament and the annual mayor’s youth council/explorers’ trips.

Take the time period from July 1, 2006 to June 30,2007, for example. According to a police department list of expenditures and revenue, $125 was paid to Wal-Mart in July for what appears to be a needy child, and $352.90 was spent to purchase items for needy children on an angel tree at Christmastime in 2006. Also, Cops for Kids paid $500 to the Rotary S.T.A.R.S. for at-risk students, and it paid $133.44 to host Breakfast with Santa for area children.

Then, consider the $3,250 that Cops for Kids paid just to charter a bus to take the mayor’s youth council and explorers – consisting of 22 students, including Crone’s daughter and the former mayor’s granddaughter, and 14 chaperones (seven p0lice officers and their spouses, including Crone and his wife) – to Washington D.C. from June 1-3. Cops for Kids also paid for 17 hotel rooms – nine doubles and eight kings – for the weekend, in addition to meals, a Washington Nationals baseball game, and various “sightseeing” visits, some of which included ticket costs.

The Mooresville Police Department’s Cops for Kids program, on its website, represented itself as a charity and solicited thousands of dollars in funds as such. But as of yesterday, the Cops for Kids webpage – which detailed the program’s intent to help children, seniors and families in need – was removed from the police department’s website. Shortly thereafter, Crone e-mailed the following statement to the Report:

“I don’t know how the web page for Cops 4 Kids Inc. got on our website. My guess is that someone within the Town Government (possibly even the police department) accidentally thought that our ‘Cops for Kids’ was part of the Cops 4 Kids Inc. The WEB page is being removed, and I apologize for the confusion.

“We are not incorporated, nor have we ever been, nor have we advertised that we are a 501C charity.

“Neither I or either of my two majors have knowledge of approving this web page. There are many Cops 4 Kids organizations on the web, some are incorporated, and I guess someone with good intentions got them mixed up. The Mooresville Police did not start their Cops for Kids until 1997 and no one is paid a salary. At one time we looked into applying for a 501C3 designation but we changed our mind and just left it under the police department.”

But even if Crone – in his 10 years as police chief – was not familiar with the police department’s website, and even if it was the police department’s intention all along to use Cops for Kids money primarily for jaunts for themselves and privileged children, we’re still left with the question of proper accounting.

Many of the receipts included in the Cops for Kids files did not document what they were for or who the purchases benefited, which would seem to be a violation of town policy. Another interesting discovery while sorting through the Cops for Kids files at the police department yesterday: A plastic baggie with $492.37 in cash in a folder titled “miscellaneous.” Though handwritten notes were in the folder, there was no clear explanation for the cash, and Crone had no explanation because he told us in another context yesterday that he had been advised to refer all questions to Erskine Smith.

We asked an expert to ring in on Cops for Kids’ lack of organizational documents and records to see if the concerns we have about Cops for Kids are misplaced. According to Tom Kelley, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law who specializes in non-profit-law, "All of this does seem peculiar. Sounds as if they’re not actually a charity."

The answer to the peculiarity that Kelley detects is that Cops for Kids has never really operated as the charity it held itself out to be. The town administration, including Erskine Smith, takes the stance that the Cops for Kids fund has always been Crone’s own "personal spending account." In recommending that Cops for Kids receive $20,000 in public funds in the 2008-09 town budget, Smith, knowing that Cops for Kids was used as the chief’s “personal spending account,” recommended that our tax dollars be put into a fund that is not subject to any financial controls or oversight -- a fund from which money has been doled out over the years at the sole discretion of the police chief, with no one checking behind him to make sure the money was being properly spent.

There is much more work to be done, but this much already seems clear: Cops for Kids, for a number of years, was presented to the public as a charitable organization that helped children, seniors and families in need, but in fact, the money collected by Cops for Kids was not used, at least substantially, for that purpose.

Additionally, Cops for Kids was operated for years — a time during which it took in and spent tens of thousands of dollars — without the most basic financial controls or any independent oversight, thereby eliminating the accountability necessary to operate government for the benefit of the people and to ensure town employees do not use their public positions for private gain.

As we continue to sift through the records, we’ll keep you updated on what we do — and do not — find.