By Eileen McNamara, Karin Crompton
Published on 3/15/2008 in TheDay.com

Old Saybrook — The state attorney general is investigating the legality of cash donations made by criminals on probation to Police Chief Edmund H. Mosca's controversial police fund.

Reports that people serving probation sentences made cash donations to the police department's “Mac Fund” — and that some of the cash was not deposited into the fund — are the latest allegations in connection with Mosca's administration of the fund.

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Friday he also is investigating whether Mosca's acceptance of donations from probation clients was legal, and whether those donations were solicited.

“There are questions about whose initiative prompted the donations and who solicited and collected the money,” Blumenthal said. “If it was purely on the initiative of the person making the donation, that's different from the probation officer coercing the donation.”

Blumenthal's comments came the same day that Mosca, through his attorney, made public some 3,500 financial documents related to the Mac Fund spanning more than 30 years. The state's Freedom of Information Commission earlier this week ordered Mosca to make the documents public.

Mosca's attorney said Friday the chief has administered the fund informally since the mid-1970s and may have made slight errors over the years in how the money was spent.

“He exercised his discretion in the expenditures of these funds,” said Lisa Lazarek, Mosca's attorney. “If that discretion was in error, the attorney general will tell us, and it will be made right before the fund is formalized.”

Mosca, who has commented only through his attorney since the fund controversy began about a month ago, recently hired a separate law firm to seek tax-exempt status for the Mac Fund.

The financial records Mosca has kept on the account show that over the years he has used the Mac Fund for expenditures ranging from $6 for doughnuts to a $1,000 golf tournament.

For instance, Mosca used Mac Fund money to host a clambake for the International Association of Chiefs of Police, which held an officers' retreat in town in June 2006, the documents show. The financial records also indicate that Mosca spent about another $900 from the fund to buy gifts, including $200 worth of Christmas ornaments, for the police chiefs who participated in the retreat and $200 for a luncheon for the wives.

Mosca is the vice president at-large of the international police chief's group.

The documents also show that at least two clients of the Middletown Court's probation office made cash donations to the fund, some of which appear to have been hand-delivered to the police department. In 2006 a man convicted of possessing narcotics made at least $450 in contributions over several months, the documents show.

Blumenthal said those donations are among some of the possible irregularities in the Mac Fund that investigators in his office are focusing on. He said he has not found any criminal activity resulting from the fund irregularities but is trying to determine, based on how the donations were solicited, whether they were legal. He also said he is investigating reports to his office that some cash donations made by probation clients are missing.

“We will follow the money trail from beginning to end,” he said.

Blumenthal said he has not found any criminal activity resulting from the fund irregularities.

He said the fund documents are so voluminous and the record-keeping so haphazard that it has made it difficult for his investigators to figure out how money was taken in and how it was spent.

“Many of these records raise more questions than they answer,” he said. “And those questions are significant and serious.”

Blumenthal's investigation also seeks to determine whether Mosca followed the state's charitable organizations law when he spent money from the fund. The law requires charitable fund administrators to spend donations in accordance with the wishes of the donors and in accordance with the stated mission of the fund.

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From the documents made public Friday, it's unclear what the Mac Fund's mission is.

It was started in 1975 as the Kirtland Memorial Fund and in 1985 it was merged with the Raymond McMurray Memorial Fund, in memory of an officer who died in a car crash on Christmas Eve in 1973. The new account became the Kirtland-McMurray Memorial Fund, and after that it began to grow at a steady pace.

Donors have included local businesses that contribute to the fund annually and individual donors who give the police department money after using its services. Mosca has said he does not solicit donations but will steer people toward it if they express interest in contributing to the department.

Mosca has said recently that the fund currently contains about $32,000. The documents indicate that at its height it held more than $35,000.

In letters he has sent over the years to donors, and in recent public statements he has made, Mosca's goals for the fund have changed.

For instance, from the late 1970s and into the early 1990s Mosca, in letters to donors, said the fund would be used for “programs and functions benefiting the youth of Old Saybrook.”

However, during that time period Mosca appears to have used only a fraction of the money for local youth.

In June 1976, the police department, through the McMurray Fund, spent $301.63 for two days of cookouts and games for the softball and baseball teams in town, which the town's Parks and Recreation Department hoped would become an annual event.

The event is not mentioned again in the documents made public Friday.

In the 1990s Mosca began to revise the Mac Fund's intent in thank-you letters to donors. In a 1993 letter, he wrote for the first time that the fund “is used to supplement the special needs of the department and its personnel and various youth programs.”

Last fall, Mosca shifted the wording again when he sent out letters to dozens of people who donated in memory of a former officer who had died. In those letters, Mosca emphasized that the fund is intended to help local youth and community programs.

“These funds will be used to ensure our department's ability to provide services and support to our community, such as youth and service club initiatives, that cannot be covered under our budget,” he wrote.

In an affidavit filed with the FOI commission, however, Mosca said the intent of the fund is to “permit me to have money to pay for whatever items I felt would be beneficial to the Department and /or its employees or whatever I deemed to be appropriate but were not included in the Department's budget.”

By 1985, when it was merged with the Kirtland Fund, the fund had grown to more than $9,000. By then, documents show, Mosca was using the fund to pay for things like uniforms, renovations to the police department, emblems and plaques for the department, and officer training.

In May 1993 Mosca used the fund to buy $5,000 worth of “dress blouses and matching pants” for the department and spent another $1,600 to cover half the cost of new patches for the uniforms.

In July 1993, Mosca used $156.22 from the fund to pay for the transfer of three M14 rifles from the U.S. Army, which approved the rifles for the department to use in counter-drug operations.

In April 1994, the fund sent $50 to the Special Olympics. In October of that year, Mosca paid himself $65 for “expenses” related to swearing in two new sergeants and a lieutenant.

In the last eight years or so, Mosca used the fund extensively to pay for events he's attended with the police chiefs association. He also donated thousands of dollars to the local Rotary Club over the years, usually in $500 or $600 increments.

In March 2006, Mosca donated $50 to the Yellow Ribbon Mothers Association, an organization of women whose children are fighting in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a letter to the organization, Mosca wrote that the fund is “a discretionary fund to be used at my discretion. ... This fund is used to purchase items not covered by the department budget and to support local youth and community projects.”

Mosca has used the fund to pay for expenses related to the Citizens Police Academy, a community outreach program. He also uses it for petty-cash items. The documents include dozens of receipts for items ranging from crullers and chocolate-frosted doughnuts from Dunkin' Donuts to cookies and flower baskets.

e.mcnamara@theday.com

k.crompton@theday.com