A former Des Plaines police
commander who padded DUI arrest records so the department could get federal
grant money was sentenced today to six months in prison.
Timothy Veit, 57, apologized in
Chicago's Dirksen U.S. Courthouse for his role in defrauding the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Illinois Department of
Transportation out of nearly $133,000 in public safety grant funding.
Police are investigating the shooting death of
a man at a Des Plaines gun range, but say it "does not appear to be the
result of any foul play."
"I'm very sorry for the
damage in reputation to the Police Department, my family and myself," Veit
said in a courtroom crowded with relatives and members of his former
department. "I had no intention to cause harm to anybody."
In addition to the six-month
prison term, Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan sentenced Veit to 200 hours of
community service. His plea agreement with prosecutors also requires him to
repay IDOT about $34,500 in restitution.
"This reminds me of
Shakespearean tragedy where a good man went bad," Der-Yeghiayan said.
Veit's attorney, Anthony
Masciopinto, said his client had been made a scapegoat for the department. Veit
had felt pressured to meet quotas to secure funding, his attorney said.
"To say Tim Veit is
single-handedly to blame is (ridiculous)," Masciopinto said. "It was
well-known. Nothing he did was a secret."
Veit, a Mount Prospect
resident, was ordered to report to prison by Dec. 16.
He was initially charged with
one felony count of making false statements, but he pleaded guilty to a
misdemeanor charge of misappropriation of government funds. He could have been
sentenced to up to a year in prison.
From 2009 to 2012, Veit padded
the department's total number of DUI arrests by 122 to conceal its failure to
meet the requirements of an NHTSA-funded impaired-driving enforcement campaign
administered by IDOT, according to prosecutors. As part of that scheme, he
provided phony blood-alcohol content levels for those fictitious arrests. That
enabled the department to collect almost $133,000 in federal money over those
years, authorities said.
"We don't think he did
this to line his own pockets," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Megan Church.
But "what is abundantly clear is no one asked him to lie."
When Veit received an email
from an IDOT grant administrator in March 2012 that the department might be
audited, he told his commanding officer he had "fudged the numbers,"
prosecutors said.
Veit retired from the
department three months later after 31 years on the force.
After a federal investigation,
the city was barred from participating in NHTSA and IDOT grants until September
2015. It also agreed to pay $92,000 in restitution and penalties.
In all, 13 Des Plaines police
officers, some of whom prosecutors said attended Thursday's court hearing in an
apparent show of support for Veit, got suspensions ranging from seven to 60
days for accepting overtime payments from the grant program for hours they
didn't work.
Des Plaines police Chief
William Kuschner, who was hired after the fraud came to light, said the
officers were not fired because they made up one-third of the city's police
force. Since the fraud was discovered, officers have had to work to earn the
trust of residents again, he said.
"Citizens come up to me
and say, 'When I get stopped by police officers, I ask: Are you one of the 13?'
" said Kuschner, who attended the sentencing. "Not only has he
stained his own reputation, he stained the reputation of anyone who wears a
badge in northern Illinois."
