HAMMOND | Gary Police reserve officer Parnell Jordan pleaded guilty in Hammond federal court to ghost payrolling Wednesday, becoming the second city officer to admit to a crime this year.
Jordan was one of seven Gary officers charged with crimes within a six-month period of time between October 2007 and March 2008. The crimes ranged from misdemeanors to federal felonies.
On Wednesday, Jordan appeared before U.S. District Judge Philip Simon to admit he had collected paychecks from a security job at a publicly subsidized housing development while he also was paid to work security for the Gary Housing Authority.
He collected more than $5,000 for hours he did not work between 2005 and 2007. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for October.
In a similar case, former mayoral security officer Kenneth Moore pleaded guilty in April to receiving paychecks from the same housing development company, Trillium Properties, even though he did not work the hours.
Moore's sentencing hearing is set for July 23.
In an unrelated case in Lake Criminal Court, misdemeanor intimidation charges are pending against Terry Smith, the former inspector of the Gary reserve police force who was charged following an Oct. 12 scuffle with other officers in the police garage. The case is ongoing.
And four regular-duty police officers also are charged with crimes in two separate civil rights cases pending in federal court.
Former officer Robert Irving was charged with slamming a suspect's head into a wall in a hospital, pulling the suspect's hair out in a police booking room while on duty in 2005 and falsifying a police report.
Irving has contested the charges, filing numerous motions in recent weeks to try to force government prosecutors to drop certain charges and reveal evidence, federal court records show.
The most notorious case came in March when the U.S. Department of Justice lodged criminal abuse charges against former Gary police Chief Thomas Houston and homicide detectives Thomas Branson and Thomas Decanter.
Houston faces the most severe allegations in the case, in which he is charged with personally mistreating several suspects who had been arrested in an alleged break-in at the chief's house in June 2007. None of the break-in suspects were charged.
Branson and Decanter face related charges in the same indictment.
Houston, Branson and Decanter have pleaded not guilty and are scheduled for trial this fall.
