Posted on 04/08/2004 7:26:06 PM PDT by Stew Padasso
Former recruit: Disk used to cheat
Police academy class graduates while inside investigation continues
ROBERT F. MOORE AND MELISSA MANWARE
Staff Writers
The man at the center of a Charlotte-Mecklenburg police investigation into whether some recruits cheated on academy exams says he believes computer disks circulated among the classmates were intended for cheating.
Police announced in February that the disks, containing questions and answers to police academy tests, had been passed among recruit classes since 2000. They have been trying to determine whether recruits who went through training in that period thought they were using a study guide or knew they had exact test questions.
"It was not a study guide," said Marcos Bomfim, who resigned from the academy Feb. 12. He said he talked with some of his classmates, and "we knew we were cheating."
"It was clear," he added. "We talked about it."
Bomfim, 49, spoke publicly for the first time in an interview with the Observer on Wednesday -- the same day 22 of his former classmates became police officers.
Bomfim said he took the disk, but immediately suspected it was something he and his classmates weren't supposed to have. He said the recruit class president gave copies of the disk to him and others, and warned them never to return the disks to the academy.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Chief Darrel Stephens said the internal investigation, which included hundreds of interviews, should be complete in two or three weeks. Then, Stephens said, he'll determine appropriate discipline for those involved and share the results with the public.
The new officers, who start work today, had to spend an extra month in the academy and retake many tests. The investigation was mentioned repeatedly Wednesday at their graduation -- during the invocation, remarks from the recruit class president, and Stephens' address.
"This is not on the shoulders of the young men and women here today. This is on the shoulders of the entire Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department," Stephens told the recruits and their families at the training-academy ceremony. "We are going to hold everyone accountable for what they need to be accountable for, but we will do it with a sense of purpose."
Members of all recruit classes since 2000 -- including the one that graduated Wednesday -- could face a range of discipline from a reprimand to being fired. Many of the 279 recruits in those classes didn't have the disks, Stephens added.
He said the department has to accept some of the blame for what happened. He's glad Bomfim came forward.
"It needed to come out," he said. "I wish it had come out years ago."
Trouble during a test
Bomfim said his trouble started with a computer glitch during a timed test.Bomfim says he was filling in a section where recruits are given a crime scenario and must write a narrative. Then he lost part of his work on the computer, he said.
He alerted the instructor, but the narrative he was writing couldn't immediately be recovered, he said. So, he asked another recruit to e-mail him the narrative he was working on about the same fictitious crime. Bomfim made a few changes to it, replacing the other recruit's name with his own, before time expired.
Bomfim said an internal affairs sergeant asked him if he had plagiarized. He denied it, saying the academy instructors told recruits they could get help from classmates on this test -- just not during the final exam.
A day later, he says, Capt. Harold Medlock at the training academy told Bomfim he had two options: Resign or be fired.
Bomfim signed the form resignation letter, and turned in his vest, clothing and gun, ending his Charlotte police career before it began.
Launch of investigation
Bomfim says he later called Sgt. Dave Gehrke, a recruit training supervisor. He felt his integrity had been unfairly questioned.
If his was to be questioned, he reasoned, what about the rest of the class?
Bomfim asked Gehrke if he'd like to see the questions and answers to the academy tests. He asked Gehrke for a fax number.
Bomfim says he downloaded them from the disk and faxed them to the sergeant. He says he heard nothing more until the next day, when he saw Stephens on television announcing that police had launched an investigation.
The chief said the department had learned that some recruits studied questions and answers to 20 of 32 tests before they were administered.
A police spokesman said Wednesday neither Gehrke nor Medlock was available for comment because of the ongoing internal investigation.
After his graduation Wednesday, DeWayne Poston, president of the recruit class, declined to talk about the investigation or say whether he distributed the disks.
In a speech he made during the ceremony, he talked about some memories he and his classmates will carry with them. He mentioned the day they met, and "the empty feeling I had in my stomach" the day they were told graduation would be delayed.
After the ceremony, Poston, a former Marine whose two brothers are Charlotte-Mecklenburg officers, told the Observer the academy was probably mentally more difficult for his class than others.
"The academy is hard for anybody. Ours got extended," he said. "The emotions may have made it a little harder."
Bomfim, a native of Brazil, formerly volunteered with the department's international relations unit. He did ride-alongs with officers and translated into Spanish for at least three years at crime scenes. He graduated from the Police Department's citizens' academy in 1998 and has two certificates of appreciation for volunteering, signed by Stephens.
Capt. Diego Anselmo, who heads the Steele Creek police district, recalled Bomfim was a valuable volunteer.
"He was one of the first volunteers in the international relations unit (created in 2000)," Anselmo recalled. "He was very motivated and committed to improving services to the Latino community. But, being a volunteer is very different from being a police officer."
Anselmo said he couldn't say whether Bomfim would have made a good officer or not.
Bomfim has since given police the disk, but said he didn't reveal it out of vengeance. He admits he was wrong, but didn't like being singled out.
"I was weak. I'm not innocent," he said. "I should have given the disk right away to a sergeant or a captain, but I didn't. And that was my mistake. I chose to listen to the devil, and I got in trouble for that."
Normally I wouldn't care about people cheating on a test, but these folks have already given themselves up as not being trustworthy and should not be allowed to conduct police work.
I do care. I worked my butt off. People wanting to skate "po" me.
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