Detroit firefighters have a hard job. They deal with all types of interesting things that range from homeless fires, burning industrial buildings, residential areas to crime scenes. Now they also must deal with one of their own stealing from them. The firefighter involved embezzled $220K in money that was to go for retirement and into personal spending and organizations she supports.
You can read more about it in Ex-Detroit fire official gets prison for embezzling $220K on hotels, flights and cruises
According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bulletin , "During the four years Day was Treasurer of the DFFA, she fraudulently obtained approximately $167,900.00 of union funds by (1) issuing checks in her name and then changing the name of the payee in the Union’s Quickbooks software; (2) cashing checks which were voided by her in Quickbooks; (3) writing checks made payable to cash; and (4) withdrawing cash from DFFA bank accounts. Day also fraudulently obtained money by diverting funds intended by the DFFA to be a donation to the NAACP."
I don't know what people think about stealing from first responders (for some its not really a problem) but it would seem to me that when people work hard for a living and take risks so they are entitled to their retirement. Stealing from that is lowering the value of those jobs and putting people at risk directly and indirectly.
The problem with a culture of corruption is that there were multiple officials across different departments stealing from pension funds (In many of these corruption situations you can trace back to poor investments, bribes, and direct theft of retirement funds). The question then becomes where did they learn this, who did they learn this from and how closely connected are they. I believe that learning where she and other officials learned these habits is important. I would also suspect that an audit of all City of Detroit pension/retirement funds is increasingly important. With luck it could lead to a connected group of people that have been misusing systems for a long time (i.e. organized crime, shadow organization, a local form of the "mob".)
The question is, "How and why are multiple departments, unions, and pension funds involved?"
I think these are the right associations below.
Detroit Firefighter's Association Webpage
Facebook Detroit Firefighters Association
Sad state of affairs when any bad behavior can be justified and lots of people look away when they are happening. 100's of people have already been caught in this web of public deceit and corruption. Its time to run it all down. My theory is that these organizations didn't change and increased transparency, new technology, and the Internet created more avenues of exposing and uncovering bad behaviors. They can't just burn the paper trail any more and data records are available for review. Old world mobs running into the Digital Era and Psychological Economy of Needs
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