A judge recently offered to reduce felony wage theft and fraud charges against 54 California Highway Patrol officers to misdemeanors, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
Fifty of the officers accepted the deal and will pay restitution, while a preliminary hearing will be scheduled for the remaining four in February, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
“Over our objection, the judge offered to reduce the felonies and allow the officers to complete a misdemeanor diversion program by paying restitution,” a press officer said in the email.
The press officer did not identify the judge, but the criminal case has been proceeding against the officers in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The press officer did not say when the judge offered the deal.
The sentence reduction is the latest development in a high-profile case that resulted from an extensive CHP investigation into overtime pay at an East Los Angeles station.
It was a common practice among officers at the station to work just two or three hours of late-night overtime at Caltrans work sites in the area and then fill out time cards claiming they had worked full shifts of eight hours or more.
The CHP announced in 2019 that it had identified about $360,000 in fraudulent overtime pay at the station through an investigation begun a year earlier. Chief Mark Garrett called the station’s overtime practices “abhorrent” and anomalistic among the department’s 103 offices around the state.
The department fired at least 33 officers and disciplined others. Attorney General Rob Bonta filed criminal charges against 54 in February, alleging they had fraudulently obtained about $267,000. Each officer was accused of stealing more than $950, California’s felony threshold.
In administrative and legal defenses, the officers said they were following a 2012 written policy and an established standard of past practice. They pointed out Caltrans supervisors had approved the time sheets, and attorneys made the case that superior officers had engaged in the same practices themselves.
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