NCJ Number
250225
Date Published
May 2016
Length
61 pages
Annotation
The U.S. Justice Department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) presents its review of allegations that Denise E. O'Donnell, the Director of the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) within the Office of Justice Programs (OJP), approved and directed the payment of one or more claims filed with the BJA under the Public Safety Officers' Benefit Act (PSOBA), 42 U.S.C. Section 3796 et seq., in direct contravention of various statutory provisions that impose conditions or limitations on the payment of benefits.
Abstract
In reviewing the case files, OIG determined that O'Donnell had not yet made a final determination regarding two of the six claims cited in the allegation. In evaluating the allegations regarding the remaining four cases, OIG concluded that in all theses cases, O'Donnell had considered and applied the relevant portions of the statute and regulations in making her determinations; however, her decision to award benefits in one case was found to be arbitrary and capricious, without support of "substantial evidence." That case involved a police officer who was killed while driving home alone after leaving a bar where he had been on an undercover assignment drinking with a target of a criminal investigation. Blood tests showed the officer's blood alcohol level to be well above the legal limit, and the PSOBA prohibits payment of a claim where an officer is intoxicated at the time of death. Both the PSOB office and the PSOB hearing officer denied the claim based on the officer's intoxication at the time of death. In her final determination, O'Donnell ignored the extreme circumstance of the crash (crossing the center line of a clear roadway and careening down an embankment to hit the roof of a house and an unoccupied parked car).