OAKLAND, Calif. — A former Oakland police officer has been charged with grand theft for allegedly getting paid for time that he didn't work, authorities said today. Wallace Hunter II, who was fired in November after 17 years with the department, was arrested Wednesday and released after posting $10,000 bail. He is to appear July 16 in Alameda County Superior Court.
Hunter bragged to colleagues of a scheme in which he would seek and get compensatory time off -- usually Friday -- but get paid for a full week's of work, police said. He usually worked the overnight shift.
The department paid Hunter $8,000 over several months between late 2005 and March 2006 for shifts he didn't work, said police Lt. Mike Yoell, head of the property/theft section.
Hunter's arrest came the same day he and his attorney, Paul Brennan of Pleasant Hill, were to have attended a hearing with an arbitrator on an appeal of his firing.
Brennan said his client "may have had a misunderstanding as to how to report the time, but at no time did he have any intent to defraud or, more importantly, did he ever receive money that he was not otherwise entitled to."
The department withheld $8,000 worth of comp time from his last paycheck before firing Hunter for untruthfulness and disobeying rules and regulations, Brennan said.
The attorney denied that his client had boasted about the alleged scheme.
Police said other officers had come forward with suspected wrongdoing. But Brennan said those officers had simply assumed that Hunter, in taking Fridays off, "must be scamming the system somehow." In reality, he said, Hunter had a large bank of comp time. Wire Services
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