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LAPD Investigating Theft of Funds at S LA Council |
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NC Watch
By Betty Pleasant (Published first in the WAVE Newspapers)
(Editor’s note: This story has been out for a few weeks. There are now enough confirmed facts to post it. Sources also report that two other neighborhood councils could soon be under similar investigation. Here is Betty Pleasant’s report.)
 The Los Angeles Police Department’s Commercial Crimes Division is
investigating accusations that the elected head of a South Los Angeles
neighborhood council stole $30,000 of the council’s city-allocated
funds.
LAPD Sgt. Ruby Malachi confirmed Tuesday that detectives are
investigating a complaint from the city of Los Angeles that Frank
Prater, former chairman and treasurer of the Empowerment Congress
Central Area Neighborhood Council, allegedly stole $30,000 of the
council’s funds over a three-year period, from 2004 to 2007.
The city of Los Angeles has certified and funded 90 neighborhood councils throughout the city and has created the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment to administer and operate these councils, whose purpose is to provide residents and stakeholders direct participation in the delivery of city services to their neighborhoods. The citywide system of neighborhood councils is codified in the City Charter.
Residents elect officers of their neighborhood councils, as well as members to sit on their council boards of directors. On paper, all the neighborhood councils are the same, as to their mission, membership and the like, but in reality they can differ quite a bit — pretty much along the lines of the myriad differences in people. At any rate, most of the neighborhood councils function very well; some do not, but what has happened in the Empowerment Congress Central Area Neighborhood Council definitely takes the cake.
Prater was elected to three terms as president of the ECCANC and served from 2002, when the neighborhood council came into existence, until March, when he was forced to resign. About two years into his office, the council found itself without a treasurer and Prater took on that office as well. He soon found himself in complete control of all the money the city of Los Angeles, through its budgeting process, was allocating to the council for its operation. The city issues a bank card so the councils can easily access the funds they’ve been allocated. Prater had sole possession of the bank card for his neighborhood council.
Is this a perfect storm for monetary mischief? I think so. All the neighborhood councils’ expenditures are online and every time that bank card is used, it is so noted online for everyone to see. I reviewed the expenditures of ECCANC for 2007 and saw more than $10,000 in suspicious withdrawals of cash at the Normandie Casino, in payments to Jimmy Jam’s T-Shirt, for purchases of Greyhound bus tickets, for the purchasing and cashing of money orders and for various and sundry flat-out cash withdrawals.
I looked at only one year and thought the suspicious use of the bank card was limited to $10,000, but Sgt. Malachi said the alleged theft covered three years and totals $30,000.
Members of the ECCANC board finally got around to looking at the online report of their council expenditures in March and hit the ceiling. They confronted Prater about it and went immediately to BongHwan Kim, general manager of the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment. Kim looked at it, forced the president/treasurer to resign and called the police on Prater, where the matter now rests and is said to be on its way to the city attorney’s office, even though the LAPD declines to discuss the particulars of its investigation.
Kim is chagrined about the theft. While he admits to being in charge of everything that goes on in the neighborhood councils, he said: “We have 90 neighborhood councils with 1,500 elected board members and we have a staff of less than 50 people. It is difficult for us to catch everything.”
He said he has reprogrammed the department’s oversight procedures to check this kind of fiscal abuse earlier, “but we are short-staffed and with budget cuts, may become even shorter,” Kim said. “But the mayor has asked us to pursue policy changes to eliminate this kind of crime.”
I have tried desperately to locate Prater and talk to him about this situation, but no one who is at liberty to tell me knows where he is. His telephone numbers have been disconnected and no one knows exactly where he lives or where he works — not even his former fellow ECCANC board members, some of whom believed he was their friend before he allegedly stole their money.
“We feel like he owes us an explanation or an apology or something,” said Gwen Wood, who was the council’s secretary with Prater. “But nobody has seen him, or heard from him or knows where he is. We’ve been looking.” (Read more Betty Pleasant and more Wave news and views at: www.wavenewspapers.com .) ◘
CityWatch
Vol 6 Issue 50
Pub: June 20, 2008
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