officer charged with 26 counts of official misconduct

A 17-year veteran of the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office is charged with dozens of false overtime claims.
Undersheriff Dwain Senterfitt says they investigated 42 claims submitted by 47-year-old Danny Hamlin, a patrol officer, from between early January and early June. He says they proved 26 of those dealing mostly with pre-trial meetings, totaling roughly $4425, are fraudulent.
“We found out the cases were over and disposed of.  We even found a couple of instances where the attorney that he said he met with was no longer with the State Attorney’s Office,” Senterfitt says.
He says it is common for officers to be called to these meetings, even while off-duty, to meet with attorneys to discuss what may come up in the pending trial.
Investigators were first tipped off because of the number of claims Hamlin submitted in the first half of the year.
“There was some suspicious overtime that was identified by his chain of command,” Senterfitt says.
In June, when Hamlin was notified of the investigation, the overtime claims stopped.
This is not the first time Hamlin has faced problems. WOKV obtained his disciplinary history, which includes 13 complaints over his 17 years of service, 6 of those complaints resulted in disciplinary action.
The complaints date back to December 1997, but the first one leading to action occurred in April 1997 when Hamlin received formal counseling for “failure to conform to work standards”.  In December 1998 he received counseling again for a “chargeable traffic crash”.
One year later he was suspended for ten days as the result of a “secondary employment violation”. Further details on the violations were not immediately available.
Hamlin was given formal counseling again in April 2001 for a “chargeable traffic crash” and November 2005 for “failure to obey an order”.
As recently as September 2012, records show Hamlin was given a written reprimand for “misuse of computer software”.
Several other citizen complaints against him were either “unfounded” or “not sustained” according to the JSO record.
Hamlin has chosen to resign. Senterfitt says it is not yet clear if he will be responsible for re-paying the total of the false overtime claims, but that will be determined during the criminal investigation.
Hamlin was also charged with one count of grand theft for an amount under $4999.
Senterfitt tells us this was a very uncommon discovery and they have been investigating for months.  He does not believe they will be making any changes in the system for how overtime is reported.