Top Cop Goes Crooked

The story as reported by the Baltimore SUN:

Former Baltimore Police Commissioner Darryl De Sousa was sentenced Friday to 10 months in federal prison, followed by one year of supervised release, after pleading guilty to failing to file federal tax returns over three years.

In court, prosecutors called De Sousa, 54, a tax cheat for inflating and falsifying deductions. De Sousa told Judge Catherine C. Blake he was caring for aging parents and should have gotten better tax preparation advice, saying, "I am embarrassed, saddened and disappointed. I have lost it all."

As De Sousa heads off to Club Fed, let's remember the highlights of his career as Baltimore's top cop. Let's see: he was appointed on February 28 of last year, and it wasn't until May 11 that the charges came out about failing to pay his taxes, forcing his resignation on May 15.

The IRS sent a letter to the police in 2015, advising them that De Sousa was claiming too many allowances, and the police, accordingly, adjusted his withholding.

So the question comes up as to why, when Mayor Catherine Pugh forced the former commissioner to resign because people keep shooting each other in the city, she did not see that information when she was going over the candidates for a new commish?

Mayor Pugh has said that the letter the IRS wrote to the PD in December 2015 "was not in the files we saw" when she and her team evaluated De Sousa's candidacy.

So, maybe she needs to talk to the Human Resources people in her office, and the police HR people too.

Of course, the mayor has her own problems, what with being held up for public opprobrium over the children's books she wrote and made half a million dollars from the University of Maryland Medical System (which is just about to apply to raise their fees and rates, in the most ill-timed request since Pee Wee Herman asked someone if he could sit behind them in a movie theater.)

And any time a public official gets in trouble and goes to trial, I always look for a ridiculous statement.  De Sousa made his by asking the judge for leniency on the grounds that he was too busy being an important policeman to follow the law.  And of course, the time-honored "I was busy caring for aging parents" excuse, always a good one.

Darryl - I will call you by that name, now that you have lost the honor of being called "Commissioner" or even "Officer," until you are issued a prison number - my family and I managed to bury both of my parents AND still paid our taxes AND had jobs.

It CAN be done, if you want to do it. Think about that while you're in stir.

Then come back to the city you disgraced and do something good.