OIG transmitted its third quarter report for 2012 to the City Council and City officials. The report provides a summary of OIG activity from July 1 through September 30, 2012.
“Investigative data alone isn’t sufficient to provide a real understanding of how OIG works,” said Inspector General Joe Ferguson. “This report, comprised of investigative case summaries and synopses of OIG audits and other recommendations, gives Chicagoans more knowledge of our work, and presents City managers and employees with a more complete understanding of OIG operations.”
Highlights from OIG administrative investigations include:
- OIG found that a Chicago Police Officer used his/her official assignment serving building violation court summonses for the City’s Department of Law (DOL) to generate business for a friend’s private company that was in the business of remediating the very same type of violations.
- An OIG investigation established that a former executive director of a City delegate agency violated the City’s False Claims Act and caused the delegate agency to breach the Delegate Agency Agreements it executed with the City by submitting fraudulent reimbursement vouchers to the City and falsely representing to the City that the delegate agency fully paid its payroll taxes. The executive director also stole more than $11,000 from the City by fraudulently obtaining personal health and dental insurance in excess of the amounts authorized by the Delegate Agency Agreements.
- OIG established that a Chicago Fire Department paramedic repeatedly and consistently violated City rules over a two-year period by driving his son to school in a CFD emergency vehicle on over eighty occasions. OIG’s investigation further revealed that CFD makes little effort to enforce the City’s vehicle usage rules and restrictions.
- A Department of Water Management (DWM) Plumber engaged in a physical and verbal altercation with a City resident he/she had been dispatched to assist. The DWM employee’s rude and discourteous behavior contributed to a tense encounter that resulted in the police being summoned to the resident’s house. The two participants in the altercation each made cross-complaints of battery against the other but no arrests were made. Long after the police departed the scene, the DWM employee remained there just for the purpose of waiting for a Chicago Sun-Times reporter he/she called to arrive and interview him/her about his/her theory that the failure to arrest the resident was the work of a police conspiracy. In waiting to be interviewed, the DWM employee detained two purportedly sick or injured DWM employees under his/her supervision and a City truck outside of the resident’s house. While the DWM employee waited for the media to arrive, he/she informed DWM supervisors that he/she was waiting for the police to finish writing incident reports.