NYPD Captain Fired After Raising $60,000 for Watches He Never Worked

An NYPD captain was forced to quit his job after investigators determined he was paid for more than 400 hours of work — about $60,000 — for never working, police sources told the Daily News on Monday.

Now former police officer Jackson Cheng declined to comment, but a source familiar with his case said the 19-year-old veteran admitted to the charges against him to avoid being fired and was allowed to retire with a partial pension.

Cheng, 45, said at a departmental hearing that he cared for his ailing parents, at least while he was supposed to be working as a detective commander in south Brooklyn, police said.

NYPD Judge Paul Gamble, however, ruled that there were no extraordinary circumstances or hardships that could justify Cheng not working when he said he did, police said. Police Commissioner Kichant Sewell made the final decision on the case on 28 November.

Gamble and the department’s attorney urged the NYPD to fire Cheng, but the commissioner rejected the recommendation and allowed him to resign.

According to the police, during the time in question – from May 2019 to October 2020 – Cheng was at work, but did not actually work for 432 hours and 37 minutes. That total includes 196 hours and 34 minutes of overtime, police said.

The source said Cheng was paid less than $1,200 for overtime – money he agreed to pay – and that the remaining overtime was to be used for weekends in the future. The source also said that Cheng claimed to have been working remotely during the pandemic even though he did not have permission to do so.

The fired captain also claimed he was the captain on duty, forcing NYPD officers to work at crime scenes in the five boroughs, rather than at their desks, for some extra hours.

Police said the offense was discovered during a routine overtime inspection, after which the investigation was transferred to the Bureau of Internal Affairs.

Cheng was a member of the Asian Hate Crime Task Force when it was first formed in 2020. A year earlier, he was named vice president when the Asian American Council of Police Chiefs was created.