Baltimore Police Commissioner Edward T. Norris and his staff spent $5,522 on personal or questionable purchases from a little-known, off-the-books police expense account, including money for a trip to New York, hotel rooms, dress shoes, leather money clips, flowers, candles and Orioles sweat shirts, according to a report released yesterday.
That money - plus another $2,741 in cash advances that lacked documentation - should be returned to the Police Department Supplemental Account, city finance director Peggy Watson said after reviewing a draft audit by Ernst & Young. The audit was spurred by a Sun investigation.
Norris said yesterday that he will personally pay back the $6,000 in expenses attributed to him, and ask the officers who used the rest to return it.
"The only regret I have is the embarrassment this has caused to the mayor and the Police Department," Norris said. "I just want to pay the money back and move on and put this behind me."
Among the expenses that Norris has agreed to pay back:
$1,790.60 spent in December last year on travel, hotel rooms and meals during a trip that Norris and his driver took to New York to attend a funeral and allow Norris to interview for a police chief's job with the Nassau County Police Department.
$2,070 for Orioles tickets, sweat shirts, souvenirs and food at baseball games for Norris and his inner circle, his former colleagues in the New York City Police Department and other "friends of the department," including an associate of Norris' who manages a steakhouse in New York.
$163 for dress shoes for the commissioner, a $62 unexplained purchase at Nordstrom's department store, a $220 knife for Norris, $62 for leather money clips that the commissioner gave out as gifts, $79 for flowers given to department secretaries and $49 for candles that Norris said he might need in case of a blackout.
The checking account at First Union Bank has been closed to prevent future misuse, according to the 24-page draft report by auditors with Ernst & Young. During Norris' more than two-year tenure, $8,263 was called into question out of a total of $159,190 spent.
"Nothing the auditors found suggested any kind of fraud," said Watson, whom Mayor Martin O'Malley assigned the responsibility of overseeing the independent audit after The Sun raised questions about many of Norris' expenses in August. "The fund was used appropriately, for the most part. However, there were some items for which I am recommending that he [Norris] reimburse the fund."
The roughly $153,000 in cash and stock that remains from the account has been transferred from the Police Department's control to the city's Board of Finance, which plans to create safeguards to make sure the account is regularly auditied and monitored. In the past, the account had no oversight, and the commissioner was solely responsible for how the money was spent.
Watson said she will recommend that the fund be used not as a personal expense account for police commissioners, but for philanthropic purposes such as sponsoring community events to improve the relationship between the police and neighborhoods.
O'Malley said yesterday that Watson and Norris decided to err on the side of caution, with police officials paying back anything that seemed questionable or lacking in documentation.
The total amount that Norris has been asked to pay back was "a bit steeper" than Norris thought it would be, O'Malley said. But Norris didn't want to fight about the items and prolong the inquiry, which was a "water torture" for both himself and the administration.
"I'm not pleased with the way the account was administered. It was sloppy accounting," said O'Malley. "But the way the account was handled was uncharacteristic of what has been in general a very well run department over the last three years."
O'Malley added: "He [Norris] is a very proud person, and he's proud of what the men and women of his police department have done. And he's ashamed and remorseful that his loose accounting reflected even indirectly on what his officers are doing."
The police commissioner's supplemental fund evolved from three charities for which city police officers in the 1920s and 1930s raised private money to help officers in need and buy athletic equipment for police leagues.
More than a decade ago, police commissioners - probably during the tenure of commissioner Edward J. Tilghman, from 1987 to 1989 - stopped using the fund for the charitable purposes it was created for and started using it as an expense account for travel and police training, according to the auditors report.
Former Police Commissioner Thomas C. Frazier, who served from 1994 to 1999, used the account more than ever before, spending a total of $356,792 over more than five years, the auditors said.
Norris, who took office more than two years ago, continued the practice, spending $159,190 in a little more than two years, according to the audit. It's not clear if Frazier or other past commissioners used the account for personal purchases, because they were never investigated, Watson said.
But the audit found that Norris had a much greater tendency than Frazier to use the account for travel expenses, hotels, meals and gifts - a total of $39,961 on hotel bills alone for Norris and his staff, for example. This compared with $4,719 for hotels for Frazier and his officers over a period more than twice as long.
Frazier spent more money from the fund on promotional items that trumpeted the Police Departent and contributions to charitable organizations, the auditors said. Frazier gave away $27,595 of the money as donations compared with $3,000 for Norris, according to the audit.
City Comptroller Joan Pratt said yesterday that she will not seek further investigation of the account, because the probing by Ernst & Young and the city's finance director seemed thorough.
To help prevent problems with the commissioner's travel and other expenses, the city has issued Norris a corporate credit card.
City Councilman Nicholas D'Adamo, chairman of the council's Budget and Appropriations Committee, said yesterday that he will ask Norris to appear before his committee to answer questions about the audit and how he spent the money.
But D'Adamo added that he believes Norris has acted honorably in agreeing to reimburse any questionable purchases. "The gentleman [Norris] has apologized to the public, and anything personal he's paying back- I think he's doing the right thing," D'Adamo said.
The auditors concluded that two purchases were obviously personal and inappropriate:
$600.21 spent Dec. 8, 2000, to fly the wife of police Lt. Col. Stanford Franklin, who runs the department's training division, to San Diego for an International Association of Chiefs of Police conference.
$61.85 spent July 12, 2000, for an unknown personal purchase at Nordstrom's department store that the police commissioner said he doesn't remember.
In addition, auditors recommended that the city conduct a further investigation to determine if other questionable purchases should also be reimbursed.
Watson found another 11 items, including: the Orioles tickets and merchandise; the travel to New York for the funeral and job interview; $163.95 spent on dress shoes for Norris; and $62.70 spent Oct. 12 last year for two leather money clips that the commissioner gave as gifts to members of the Police Department.