STAMFORD — Three former city police officers accused of bilking the police department’s extra-duty program of more than $154,000 were granted a pretrial probation program on Wednesday that could mean the charges against them are dropped.
Following a disposition hearing Wednesday afternoon, Judge Gary White granted former Stamford officers David Sileo, Paul Pavia and Mark Ligi entry into the state’s accelerated rehabilitation program.
“It’s a shame that these three officers conducted themselves in such a dishonorable and deceptive manner,” White said after granting the former officers the probationary program. “Each one of them apparently had a long and good career as police officers, and it’s disappointing that they embarrassed and humiliated themselves in the way that they did.”
Supervisory State’s Attorney Maureen Ornousky did not object to the three former officers being granted accelerated rehabilitation. Since their arrests, the three have cooperated with prosecutors and provided information against a fourth officer, Christopher Broems, who is currently awaiting trial, according to Ornousky.
In addition to cooperating with prosecutors, each officer has also made a $10,000 contribution to a charity of their choice, Ornousky said.
Accelerated rehabilitation is a pretrial program available to people accused of nonviolent crimes. Under the program, defendants do not plead guilty to the crime but are placed on up to three years’ probation. If they commit no other crimes during the probation, the original charges are dismissed.
Sileo, Pavia and Ligi were all placed on six months’ probation. Their next court dates are scheduled for Aug. 3. If they go that period of times without any being arrested, all three will have their charges dropped.
White’s decision Wednesday marks what could be the beginning of the end of a controversial case that began three years ago when Ligi, 58; Pavia, 56; Sileo, 59 and Broems, 54, were arrested in June 2019 on charges of first-degree larceny and conspiracy to commit first-degree larceny.
According to the warrants, all four men “actively took part in this scheme” by claiming cancellation fees they were not owed. Sileo, Pavia and Ligi falsely completed and signed extra-duty vouchers for each other and for Broems, and failed to record the required paperwork, the warrants state.
The former officers were accused of submitting a total of 643 false payroll vouchers that amount to $187,618, nearly all of it paid by the natural-gas affiliate of Eversource, the utility company that regularly hires a large number of extra-duty officers.
Their arrest warrants describe how the officers, who had worked in the department’s Central Hiring Office, were identified through an in-house audit that showed the four had collected what appeared to be an inordinate amount of cancellation fees.
Police union rules mandate that contractors be billed for four hours of an officer’s time if they cancel a job later than 10 p.m. the previous day. The warrants allege that the former officers filled out the vouchers with their own names after jobs were canceled. Since the jobs were not assigned to an officer before they were canceled, Eversource should not have been charged for the four hours’ pay, the warrants state.
According to the Police Department’s website, officers are paid $68 per hour for extra-duty work, with an additional 16 percent administrative fee going to the city. A memorandum of understanding attached to the city’s contract with the police union stipulates that all jobs controlling traffic at road work sites and providing security at public gatherings shall first be offered to police officers.
The warrants allege that Sileo, who’d been a Stamford police officer for 29 years, was improperly paid $64,976 by Eversource between January 2014 and his reassignment on March 25, 2019.
According to the warrants, Pavia, also with the department for 29 years, falsely charged Eversource $56,000 in cancellation fees for the same period.
Ligi, who was with the department for 33 years, is charged with falsely collecting $33,084 from Eversource.
Broems, 54, who spent 21 years with the department, is charged with collecting $7,680 in false cancellation fees from Eversource and $480 from an upstate contractor, Erland Construction, for a total of $8,160.
The remaining nearly $26,000 of the total was paid to the city as part of its administrative fee.
