By Steven A. Rosenberg
Salem police Captain Brian
Gilligan, who was suspended last month for working extra detail shifts while on
city time, will no longer oversee detail shifts as part of his duties, Police
Chief Paul Tucker said.
In a review of department policy,
Tucker said Captain Mark Losolfo would oversee detail assignments. Tucker also
announced that officers could no longer take half days of vacation time to work
details. Gilligan, who has worked for the Salem Police Department for 21 years,
will still run the department’s Special Operations Division, which oversees
planning of events such as Halloween, parades, and the department’s Street
Crime Unit.
Continue reading below
Gilligan, who topped the
department’s salary list by earning $168,000 last year, could not be reached
for comment.
This marks Gilligan’s second
suspension as a Salem police officer. According to Tucker, Gilligan was
suspended in 2005 for 30 days for having “an improper relationship with a court
employee.”
The policy assessment comes
just weeks after Gilligan was suspended for five days, and was forced to
forfeit 12 vacation days after Tucker concluded that Gilligan may have worked
as many as 24 detail shifts over the last year on city time.
In an interview, Tucker said he
began his investigation in the spring after some officers questioned Gilligan’s
record keeping. Tucker speculated that some of the hours Gilligan worked on
detail shifts may have been on comp time — city police hours that Gilligan had
previously worked but did not submit for pay — but the work hours were poorly
documented.
In a May 29 letter to Gilligan,
Tucker said he had warned the police captain to properly submit his work hours.
“You should recall my direct warning to ensure you took appropriate steps to
use vacation or personal days if you wished to engage in detail work. You
should also recall my telling you that if you didn’t properly document your
time off that a year or two from now it will appear as if you were
double-dipping,” Tucker wrote.
According to Salem police
policy, detail officers earn $40 an hour, and once they begin the shift they
are paid a minimum of $160, even if the detail lasts less than four hours.
Detail shifts are assigned by seniority, and senior officers, such as Gilligan,
can work as many shifts as they sign up for. Last year, Gilligan earned an
extra $26,352 in detail pay.
“I think there’s a lesson here
for everybody, that you have to be circumspect,” said Tucker, who does not
believe the practice of working details on city time is widespread.
Tucker also believes new
computer software the department plans to purchase will improve the way work
hours are recorded, now still done on paper.
Meanwhile, Mayor Kimberley
Driscoll plans to conduct a review of the suspension. “I would like an external
review conducted of the circumstances leading to this suspension. I believe
having a second set of eyes reviewing the facts involved in this matter will be
beneficial to my office, the department, and the citizens of Salem,” she said
in a prepared statement.
Driscoll also may soon be
looking for a new police chief. Tucker is the lone Democrat seeking to replace
outgoing state Representative John D. Keenan of Salem. His opponent in the
November election is Daniel Morris, a Libertarian candidate and Salem State
student.
Earlier this spring, the Salem
City Council rejected a proposal by Driscoll to remove the police chief’s post
from the civil service system. That proposal would have allowed Driscoll to
recruit a new chief from outside the department. According to Tucker, the
current civil service post calls for a chief to be hired from within.