Audit reveals misspending and more at UNC police department. It was ‘secret’ until now
An internal audit says a UNC-Chapel Hill police department member used a criminal information database improperly, wasted money on a leased vehicle and golf cart, and took a department vehicle to attend two out-of-town football games.
Last month, Chuck Duckett, a former UNC trustee, said he and others on the board had received two audits involving former UNC police chief David L. Perry, who resigned on June 30 after less than two years in the job. He was previously Florida State University’s police chief.
Perry said in email messages that he had not seen the audits until the The News & Observer shared them Monday. He vehemently rejected their findings, adding that their release violated a nondisclosure agreement he said UNC officials used to silence his complaints of racial discrimination.
“I have been advised by my attorney that the sharing of this information by UNC Board of Trustees members with the media constitutes a violation of the non-disclosure agreement UNC attorneys created, forced me to sign and agreed to in an attempt to mute and counter my complaints to the administration of racial discrimination and hostile work environment,” wrote Perry, a former assistant vice chancellor with a base annual salary of $225,000.
The N&O obtained the audit from the UNC System office after UNC-Chapel Hill officials would only release a heavily redacted copy that shed no light on what auditors found.
The recently released document provides new detail. UNC-CH’s internal audit office received five anonymous complaints regarding “waste, abuse, and/or misuse of institutional resources,” according to the report dated Dec. 22, 2020. The office said it largely substantiated all of them.
They include:
- Accessing a criminal information database for use outside of police business. Over a six-month period last year, an official accessed it 29 times, one audit stated, but could only show that four of those times were for official police business. Most of the inquiries focused on people with Florida and Georgia addresses. The terms and conditions of the database, operated by a company called TLO, say that misuse can result in “immediate termination of the account” and “full prosecution by law.”
- Using a UNC police vehicle to travel to an out-of-state football game at FSU in Tallahassee on Oct. 17, and to the University of Virginia on Oct. 31. For the FSU trip, two people, including a “life-long” friend of the police official, attended the game at no cost. The UVA trip also included a friend described the same way who attended the game for free. The vehicle, with lights and sirens on, escorted the football team both times to the stadiums. In both cases, the internal auditor said the trips did not involve state business.
- Leasing a vehicle from Enterprise at a cost of $38,473 for four years. The department spent another $3,900 on lights and other equipment. At that time, the report said, the department had five Ford Explorers purchased in February 2019 on hand that each cost nearly $30,000.
- Purchases of a new, six-seat golf cart that with added equipment at a cost of $13,664, a curved 38-inch computer monitor for at home use that cost $958 when monitors ranging from $119 to $130 were available, and 22 “tactical vests” totaling $3,740, most of which went into storage.
- Failure to properly notify authorities outside the department’s jurisdiction of a threat to a UNC student. After being notified that a student with a Durham address received a threat from an ex-boyfriend, the official dispatched UNC police to her home. The official should have also provided a written request to the Durham police so its officers could intervene if needed.
Policy, fiscal, ethics problems
The audit report said the findings ran counter to police policy and procedures, fiscal responsibility and ethics.
The UNC System blanked out the names of individuals cited in the audit reports. Perry said he did nothing wrong.
“I vehemently deny any intentional misuse of computer systems and assert the same denial for any university made purchases or travel as all were channeled through appropriate systems receiving necessary justifications and approvals more than one year ago,” he said.
He also threatened to release damaging information about UNC.
“Further breaches of the agreement will result in my release of information regarding the state of the university police department, university [administration] and board of governors leadership regarding my treatment as a proud African American law enforcement professional,” he wrote.
Last week, UNC officials said there were no responsive records to the N&O’s request for any settlement reached between Perry and the university.
George Battle, the university’s vice chancellor for Institutional Integrity and Risk Management, said in the report in response to the findings: “My organization will oversee further review of the substantiated allegations outlined in this report, and will determine ultimate disposition of the allegations in a forthright manner.”
Three months after that report, internal auditors reported a complaint that a police official had “circumvented Department policies and procedures and contacted two parties (student-athletes) involved in a reported larceny incident on February 14, before investigators contacted them.”
The N&O originally asked for internal audits from UNC-CH on June 25 after learning that Perry, 50, was on leave. When asked, a UNC-CH spokeswoman offered no explanation for his absence. It took three weeks for the university to release them; by then the N&O had learned of their existence through the state Council of Internal Auditing, which had also received the same heavily redacted copy.
Of the two audit reports UNC-CH released previously, that one had much more detail, but redactions still made the details murky.
The audit said the complaint was unfounded, but said the official made a “policy misstep” in not documenting his conversations with the athletes in the case file.
UNC-CH Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz was out of town and unavailable Monday to respond to a reporter’s email request for comment, a UNC-CH spokeswoman said. Battle said Monday in an emailed statement: “UNC-Chapel Hill applied the privacy protections of the State Human Resources Act consistent with its approach to handling requests for documents containing personnel information of its employees.”
Kate Maroney, another UNC-CH spokeswoman, last month said that the state’s personnel law prevented the campus from releasing information in internal audits regarding personnel matters. The university may not acknowledge an internal audit exists if the university considers the information protected under state privacy laws, she said.
“(A) response from the Office of Public Records that no responsive records exist in response to a request for an audit could mean that no such audit exists, that an audit is not complete, or that an audit exists and is complete but is protected from public release as provided by the North Carolina Public Records Act or the State Human Resources Act,” Maroney said.
The personnel law allows state officials to release employee information to show their agencies are acting with integrity. UNC-CH did not exercise that option. And state law specifically identifies internal audits as public records, though information protected by privacy laws can not be shared.
UNC System President Peter Hans said in an emailed statement the public should see much more of what the audits reported.
“Reasonable people can disagree on how the public records law intersects with personnel privacy protections in state law,” said Hans, a UNC-CH graduate and former chairman of the system’s Board of Governors. “I believe we should err on the side of transparency whenever we can. It helps build and maintain public confidence in our public institutions, including UNC-Chapel Hill.”
The News & Observer obtained the audit from the UNC System office after UNC-Chapel Hill officials would only release a heavily redacted copy that shed no light on what went wrong.
The copy provided by the UNC System also has redactions, but they appear to be only for a name or title.
Editor’s note: This story was updated with a comment from George Battle, UNC-Chapel Hill’s vice chancellor for Institutional Integrity and Risk Management.
This story was originally published August 2, 2021 at 2:26 PM.