Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe issued the following statement regarding new allegations of credit card abuse within the County’s Probation Department:

The decision to have criminal prosecutors investigate these allegations of credit card fraud by a handful of individuals within the Probation Department is absolutely the right thing to do and a justified move. I fully support the District Attorney’s effort to swiftly respond to this criminal activity.

The minute you begin issuing credit cards under the name of a government agency, you start a slippery-slope that can often lead to exactly this type of fraud. Credit cards need the tightest of controls and checks, and that clearly failed here. Government employees need to have the highest responsibility for every taxpayer dollar they spend, and even more so in times of extremely tight budgets such as this.

Fortunately, we have appointed new leadership within the Probation Department over the last several months. Chief Blevins and his team are strong reformers and have been given a clear mandate and power to take disciplinary actions and make the changes needed to bring this type of mismanagement to a swift end.