NEW ORLEANS -- Working security detail at the Walgreens in downtown New Orleans is far from a crime, but it is when you're an on-duty NOPD officer being paid by tax dollars to patrol city streets instead of a pharmacy.
According to the NOPD's Public Integrity Bureau, that is exactly what officers Brian Pollard and Herman Franklin did in 2007.
Police documents obtained by Eyewitness News show the officers never had their police pay deducted "...for the time each of them spent working at Walgreens while they were suppose (sic) to be working for the New Orleans Police Department."
"Both of these officers, in my opinion, should have been fired," said Rafael Goyeneche, head of the Metropolitan Crime Commission. "And both of them should have been prosecuted."
But neither officer was; instead, they were allowed to enter into a sort of counseling and education course known as a diversionary program. The opportunity is designed for first time, non-violent offenders and is fairly common, but Goyeneche said the pair of officers were allowed to skip several steps in the process.
"Usually the prerequisites for going into the diversionary is that: a), you've been arrested; b), that you have agreed to admit your guilt; and c), you have agreed to make restitution for any money that you have defrauded from individuals," said Goyeneche. "In this case it was city of New Orleans."
Not all of those steps, however were followed in the case of Pollard and Franklin. NOPD documents signed by Superintendent Warren Riley say details of the diversionary deal were even a secret to police in light of a "confidential information agreement" the officers struck with the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office, headed then by Bobby Freeman.
The letter announcing the agreement was written on Freeman's letter head, but the former district attorney said the deal was cut without his permission, two weeks before he ever took office. Freeman said the man who signed the letter, Assistant District Attorney Robert White, was the sole person responsible for the arrangement.
In a statement, current District Attorney Leon Cannizaro told Eyewitness News the same thing.
"It is my understanding that decisions involving these investigations and the disposition were at the sole discretion of Mr. White and that the former district attorney neither approved nor disapproved of such decisions," said Cannizzaro.
White left the district attorney's office before Cannizzaro took office in January 2009.
Regardless, Goyeneche said the NOPD and the district attorney's office failed the system, giving a pair of officers a very special and unusual kind of deal.
"The NOPD could have arrested them. The NOPD could have fired them," said Goyeneche. "The district attorney's office could have charged them, the district office's could have predicated their acceptance to the diversionary program upon their resignation."
Instead, the officers were allowed to continue their work at the NOPD, each detectives in the Fifth District. In the midst of the investigation, officer Pollard was even transferred to the elite homicide division.
"And was allowed to handle the most sensitive investigations conducted by the police department," said Goyeneche.
At the urging of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, Cannizzaro's office resurrected the case in hopes of finding additional evidence of wrong doing that wasn't part of the officers previous deal. For Franklin, the district attorney's office found some, charging Franklin today with public pay roll fraud.
Assistant Superintendent Marlon Defillo said he couldn't comment on the case, but did confirm Franklin has since been placed on desk duty pending the results of his trial.
Officer Brian Pollard, however, has not been charged with anything because Cannizzaro's office was unable to find any evidence of additional fraud that was not previously discovered as part of the initial deal.
