Edward T. Norris, Baltimore Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris has used a loosely monitored, off-the-books departmental fund to finance more than $178,000 in expenses during the past two years, including trips to New York, gifts to fellow officers and others, and expensive meals at trendy restaurants.
Yesterday, Mayor Martin O'Malley criticized Norris' handling of the account and said he was unaware it existed until recently. The fund paid for, among other things:
$433 for sweatshirts and jackets purchased to keep police commanders warm when the weather turned chilly at an Orioles game in April.
$550 for 55 pairs of gold-plated cuff links inscribed with the word "Commissioner" that Norris gave away as souvenirs.
About $20,000 in trips, including at least eight in the past year to New York, where Norris and others spent about $2,500 on meals at a Manhattan steakhouse.
Unlike the department's other funds, the supplemental account was unsupervised and unaudited by other city officials or the Board of Estimates. Rather, Norris and past commissioners have had the authority to spend its money as they wished. Their rationale was that the fund grew from donations and charitable activities and was not tax money.
The fund began during the Great Depression, when the department operated several accounts to help the needy and to lend employees money in hard times. But over the decades, the fund's uses have changed - from being a rainy-day account for those in need to an expense budget for trips and meals. And a series of police commissioners has managed to keep the fund relatively secret.
O'Malley said yesterday that he ordered the fund's money turned over to the control of City Finance Director Peggy Watson.
"I'm a bit angry that there wasn't better and tighter accounting," O'Malley said. "Because if there were, there wouldn't be any room for any questions."
O'Malley said he stood behind Norris, calling him "a terrific police officer and police commissioner."
Norris froze the fund, known as the Baltimore Police Department supplemental account, and launched an internal audit of its books after The Sun recently inquired about expenses paid to the commissioner, Norris' security detail and aides.
Norris, who was sworn in for a six-year term yesterday, conceded that the fund was poorly supervised and called the accounting "sloppy."
"It was a terrible system," Norris said. "Believe me, this was an accountant's nightmare."
While admitting to accounting problems, Norris defended his purchases and trips yesterday, saying they were all legitimate expenses. He said that during his stays in New York, he was conducting departmental business, attending seminars, meeting high-ranking New York police officials and trying to recruit new members for the Baltimore Police Department.
Norris also said that the meals and trips were instrumental in enabling him to raise more than $3 million for the Baltimore Police Foundation, a nonprofit established by Norris to help buy equipment and other items for the force.
City Comptroller Joan Pratt learned about the account after being contacted yesterday by a reporter. "I believe that there should be some checks and balances and oversight, and I don't think one individual should have sole discretion to have unlimited spending without accountability," Pratt said.
Like comptroller Pratt, city finance director Watson said she never knew the fund existed until recent weeks.
The fund was controlled by Norris, who authorized other officials in the department's fiscal office to write the checks.
Sometimes the disbursements worked like this:
Checks would be written to Thomas Tobin, a 23-year veteran officer who is Norris' driver. Tobin was apparently designated to pay for the commissioner's expenses as they arose. Later, Tobin would submit receipts for his expenses, but not always. In all, more than $48,000 in checks was given to Tobin. Last month, Tobin was asked to return more than $12,000 that he never spent on expenses, after The Sun requested to review the agency's files.
Tobin last night said that he had done "absolutely nothing wrong" and the $12,000 had been stored "in a safe at work" before he was asked to return it to officials overseeing the account.
Tobin declined to talk further.
Norris has not been the only police commissioner to use the account to pay for trips, dining and gifts. In the 1990s, Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier spent about $300,000 in five years, police officials said.
Among Frazier's trips was one to Hawaii to attend a conference. Frazier's trip was paid for with money from one of the department's regular funds and approved by the Board of Estimates. But Frazier, who could not be reached for comment, wanted to bring his driver. So he financed his driver's trip with money from the off-the-books supplemental account, police officials said.
Familiar with N.Y.
Norris, who grew up in New York and rose to the highest levels of that city's police force, expensed trips to Manhattan at least eight times during the past year, staying each time at W New York, a boutique hotel in Midtown Manhattan, about four miles from New York Police headquarters.
Norris had trouble recalling the reasons for making some of the trips, saying he did not keep detailed records.
His hotel bills cost $3,745.14. Many times, Tobin, his driver, accompanied him. Tobin racked up hotel bills of about $4,000.
The pair also dined often at Smith & Wollensky, a steakhouse near the W hotel, where Tobin expensed more than $2,500 in meals during the visits.
While he called some of those visits recruiting trips, he declined to reveal whom he was courting from the New York Police Department. Norris also visited colleges in New York, but he said that he lured only one recruit to visit Baltimore.
Norris expensed two trips to other cities, Richmond, Va., and Washington, D.C., during the past year. He said he frequently visits New York because its department "is the benchmark for law enforcement for the country. That's where I go to seek the best people, the best training, the best practices." Also, he said he took trips to New York to learn more about terrorism in light of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Many receipts for the eight New York trips lack details. Often, as with all the meals at Smith & Wollensky, Norris and his aides submitted blank stubs with handwritten amounts for their meals. The stubs did not indicate the dates of the meals or who attended and why.
"I wish better records were kept," Norris said. "I thought somebody would be writing this stuff down."
Norris did recall expenses that were not recorded.
When the mother of Norris' chief of staff died, Norris attended the funeral, expensing his hotel stay, as well as Tobin's. The hotel for the two cost $1,187.28. Meals at the steakhouse were $544.35, the handwritten stubs show.
Besides trips, jackets at ballgames, cuff links and thousands of dollars in golf shirts, T-shirts and sweat shirts, records show that the fund paid for two $30 money clips at a Coach store, which Norris says he gave away as gifts, although he could not recall who received them.
Tobin purchased shooting gloves and fleece pants, for $90.19, at Dick's Sporting Goods. The driver expensed a $472.49 Palm Pilot for Norris. Tobin bought at least $1,350 in supplies at Franklin Covey, a high-end office supply store that specializes in organizers. One leather binder cost the department $205.
Norris said many of those purchases at Franklin Covey - including several of his own - were gifts for members of his staff.
Norris also personally made purchases on the account. He spent $220 at Chesapeake Knife & Tool Company downtown Sept. 12, but again he did not recall what he bought.
He authorized the purchase of a $475 Glock .45-caliber pistol that he tested out, and spent more than $1,000 at Galco International, a business in Arizona that manufactures holsters. Norris said he bought the holsters for his aides.
Norris used the fund to buy a $3,783.75 Apple laptop computer that he keeps at home- "It's the best one out there," Norris said. Normally, such a purchase would require the approval of the Board of Estimates.
Norris and his staff used the fund for meals at some of Baltimore's finest restaurants-submitting receipts for meals at Sotto Sopra, Petit Louis, Morton's Steak House and Fleming's Prime Steak House. Most of the receipts do not indicate who attended the meals.
It is unclear where many other meals took place. At least 30 times during the past year, Norris and his aides submitted receipt stubs, totaling $4,767.50, that did not identify the restaurant and noted only the cost of the meal.
The fund also paid to have people visit Baltimore for training, many from the NYPD. But other hotel bills remain unclear.
In December, the fund reimbursed one of Norris' aides for getting a hotel room in Baltimore in Tobin's name. The expense was classified as "training." Norris said he is not sure why that room was rented.
When Norris took over the department, he and his aides turned in more detailed receipts, but soon the expense reporting became more vague.
Many of the accounting lapses centered on checks written to Norris' driver and aide, Tobin. In two years, Tobin was written $48,658.46 in checks, much of which was spent on purchases for the commissioner, including hotel rooms, meals and office supplies.
On July 31, two days before The Sun inspected the fund's records, Tobin returned $12,729.32 in cash in 17 envelopes. Each contained money that was not accounted for in expense advances that Tobin had received. One had $1,000, the entire sum issued to him in a September check.
Tobin did not submit receipts for two other checks, each written for $1,000 in 2000. The status of those checks was unclear. According to the department's audit, Tobin still owes the account $6,267.82 because he was missing receipts. A total of $8,396.56 is unaccounted for, the audit shows.
Norris defended Tobin, saying that he trusted his aide, and that other police officials needed to do a better job of monitoring expenses.
"The people supposed to be watching the fund were not watching it," Norris said, referring to analysts and officers in the department's budget and fiscal office.
However, he said, "The buck stops with me."
Whenever Tobin or anyone else received a check for anticipated expenses, Norris usually issued an authorization letter. For 11 checks, totaling more than $13,000, the authorizing letters were written the same day, July 15, after the checks had been issued.
Norris said that he and other commissioners were entitled to use the fund because the account did not contain "taxpayer money." It grew from three funds dating back decades, all financed by donations and activities from the public and police officers.
Creation of fund
The Christmas Basket Fund was created in 1936 to give small loans to members of the department and to other causes during the Great Depression. The Unemployed and Emergency Fund was created in 1931 and also gave small, temporary loans to employees. The Athletic Fund, established in 1929, was financed by tickets from athletic events that showcased departmental teams.
When the Depression hit, the Union Trust Company gave the department 233 shares of stock in lieu of the cash. In 1983, the three accounts were merged into one, now known as the supplemental account. Over the years, the fund grew to contain 9,840 shares of Capitol One Financial Corp stock, valued at $440,000, when Norris took over. Meanwhile, the account's cash supply had dwindled during the previous administration to about $1,100.
In 2000, Norris ordered the sale of 2,500 shares, adding $112,185 to the supplemental fund, an interest-bearing checking account. He had spent most of that money by November, when $142.53 remained. Norris then ordered the sale of $50,000 worth of stock. Before Tobin's deposits July 31, the fund had shrunk to $175.49.
In a 1963 letter, then-City Auditor Ward C. Beck Jr. said that the account did not have to be audited, like other funds controlled by city government, because the funds were the "immediate result of voluntary contributions and other activities of members of the department."
Beck noted that the accounts contained "private funds not considered governmental in any sense nor defray any part of the normal operating expenses of your department."
Sun staff writers Tom Pelton and Laura Vozzella contributed to this article.