What are HPD cops doing on city time?

By Wayne Dolcefino

(11/14/07 - KTRK/HOUSTON) - It's the biggest HPD Internal Affairs probe in years. Hundreds of officers, even some police commanders, are under scrutiny.

13 Undercover has the evidence some Houston cops may be cheating you from time that should have been spent fighting crime.

It's mid morning on Tanner off Gessner. Cops have an accused dope dealer in custody. A show of force after an officer called for help in making the arrest.

The guy in charge of protecting northwest Houston is on the scene. But has Captain Carl Driskell's command been compromised by internal investigations of his use of city computers?

"I haven't done anything inappropriate Wayne," he told us. "But then again that is under investigation."

"But you did use computers," I asked.

"I have no other comment, we'll let the investigation determine what the facts are," he replied.

We examined the Internet use of Captain Driskell's city computer months ago. We looked for evidence his computer was being used to take courses from an online university out of West Virginia called Mountain State University.

"The records show your computer was used either by you or someone else," I said.

"I understand all of that, so we'll let the department investigation determine the facts," Captain Driskell replied.

According to police records, Captain Driskell didn't have what 280 other police supervisors have, a masters or doctorate degree. That includes Police Chief Harold Hurtt. He's got a master's too.

We may be short of cops, but the ones we do have like to get new university degrees. And you're paying for it in record numbers. You spent $1.1 million reimbursing Houston cops for tuition this year and you give them pay raises for getting the degrees. That's more than $8 million in the last year.

And when it comes to master's degrees, many police officers got them online from Mountain State. The West Virginia school even advertises in the hallways of the Houston police union and it's not the only one.

Who would complain about smarter cops? Unfortunately there's evidence some of the school work was done on duty when cops should have been crime fighting.

"When they are at work, we expect them to work for the citizens of Houston," Chief Harold Hurtt told us.

For the first time, you'll see why our Mountain State investigation is no molehill. We have police computer records you'll see nowhere else. The records were created because we asked for it. It's HPD's own computer capturing the days, even hours the Mountain State Web site is on a city police computer.

Take Captain Driskell's computer. HPD's records show it's been on the Mountain State Web site all hours of the day. We even know what day it was accessed the most. That day was April 23rd.

"I'm not going to comment on that, the department is doing an investigation," Captain Driskell told us. "I'm not going to interfere with that investigation."

But Captain Driskell's computer has plenty of company. The HPD computer records show 380 police computers spent time on the Mountain State Web site this year.

"We're doing an investigation of that issue based on info you provided to internal affairs," said Chief Hurtt.

HPD's policy permits the limited use of computers for personal use, but employees are to use good judgment.

But we found over two million hits on that one school website and nearly 1,100 hours of computer time in just nine months. A lot of it during times of the day the employees were on duty.

The school site was also on computers assigned to commanders like Captain Driskell, detectives in burglary, homicide, robbery, airport police, internal affairs and the office of inspector general where the police department investigates wrongdoing. That's just on city computers.

After our Mountain State discovery we asked for Internet history on two other schools. That's when police began their internal investigation.

"This is serious allegations, we want our people on the street working," Chief Hurtt told us.

And some cops now allege to us that commanders force officers to do online tests for them. They say some cops sit in police cars accessing school websites on wireless computers.

"They should be reporting that to internal affairs and not the media," Hurtt said

Just how deep and how high up does the possible time cheating go? Police could subpoena records from schools to get the answer.

Thursday night at 10pm we'll show you a police physical fitness program that's taking lots of cops off the street. Has it become a big joke?

(Copyright © 2007, KTRK-TV)