Ex-FOP president gets 23 months for theft
For a retired, 26-year police veteran, it was a humiliating day of reckoning, a day when cops were shown to be robbers.
For a retired, 26-year police veteran, it was a humiliating day of reckoning, a day when cops were shown to be robbers.
Gerald Conaway, former president of the Bucks County Fraternal Order of Police, was sentenced to prison yesterday for stealing from his own organization.
"I have made a very grave mistake and tarnished the badge that I had sworn to uphold," Conaway, 66, of Southampton, said in Bucks County Court. He had pleaded guilty in October to felony theft and conspiracy charges for pilfering $5,500 from FOP funds to pay personal debts.
Judge Jeffrey L. Finley could have given him probation, but said Conaway's years of police work in Upper Southampton only made his crime worse, given his knowledge of the law.
"This was not a reckless act. This was not a mistake," Finley said before sentencing Conaway to three to 23 months in the county prison. "You stole the death benefits of police officers."
A second former FOP official, whose thefts from the organization dwarfed Conaway's, is likely to face harsher punishment.
Katherine Leese, 42, pleaded no contest yesterday to charges that she embezzled more than $87,000 in FOP funds. Leese, a former Falls Township officer who served as FOP treasurer, used the money for home improvements, credit-card payments, and other personal expenses.
Leese will be sentenced after a presentence investigation. Finley called her "the more culpable of the two."
The two were arrested after an FOP auditor in 2007 found thousands of dollars missing. Combing through bank statements from 2006 and 2007, FOP Financial Secretary Richard Frederick found numerous unauthorized transfers from the FOP's account to Leese's personal account, court records show.
Frederick, a Plumstead Township police sergeant, also found two transfers to Conaway's personal account.
Leese told investigators she had Conaway's permission to take out a "loan" from the FOP. She said she used the money to pay off credit cards and to help convert her fire-damaged, one-story home into a two-story structure, according to court documents.
Conaway denied approving Leese's transfers and was aghast when told she had taken such a large sum, investigators reported.
When confronted by investigators, Conaway immediately paid back all the money he took, with interest. He characterized the sums as unauthorized "loans" that he took out to pay taxes and other debts, but conceded in court that he knew it was illegal to do so.
Leese, meantime, has paid back relatively little of the money she took. The FOP has sued her to recover the rest.
Defense attorney Robert Mancini asked Finley to consider Conaway's extensive service as a community volunteer and as a decorated Vietnam veteran. But Finley said he would not give any weight to Conaway's lengthy law enforcement career, saying Conaway had "disgraced that position."
After the sentencing, Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc Furber said Conaway, as a longstanding police officer, should have known better. "He betrayed all of the officers he had served with over the years."
Mancini called it "unfortunate that [Conaway] made such a bad choice late in life. . . . Gerry is a decent man."
