The plea deal came nearly two years after a WDRB News investigation exposed overtime abuse by several officers, including the three who have now admitted to the scheme. According to the U.S. Attorney, Stanfield, Roadhouse and Final schemed together from 2014 to 2017 to submit hours to LMPD when they actually didn’t work the hours. They also failed to work during their assigned shifts, according to court documents. To justify the excessive hours, all three prepared “false and fraudulent uniform citation arrest reports in which they altered the time of the arrest and added each other’s names on the signature line,” according to the documents in the case. For example, according to prosecutors, if an arrest occurred at 6 p.m., the officers would write that it happened later, maybe 9 p.m., to make it justify the overtime hours. They would then add each other’s names to the report to allow all to collect overtime pay. The officers also coordinated with each other to ensure the overtime hours submitted did not “conflict with specific times that one or more of them was also purporting to work secondary employment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephanie Zimdahl wrote in the new documents. “The scope and magnitude of this crime are a betrayal of that public trust and the power granted to those who serve in law enforcement,” Zimdahl wrote. In addition, the U.S. Attorney alleges that the men claimed to have worked hours for the ATF as part of a special task force when they in fact did not work the hours. LMPD paid the three for those hours and was then reimbursed by the federal government. Stanfield retired in February 2018 while under internal investigation for violating department policy by getting paid as a police officer while also working off-duty at UPS. But the case was closed “by exception” because of his retirement, according to a letter from Police Chief Steve Conrad. Roadhouse retired shortly after the WDRB News investigation was published. Final resigned from the department when the trio was charged. In September 2018, Louisville Metro Council passed a resolution requesting an internal audit of LMPD overtime spending from December 2016 to August 2018. The WDRB News investigation found officers worked weeks or months without taking a day off — including weekends — logging what experts say would be either suspicious or dangerously long hours. Yet the department has no internal policies meant to force officers to rest or avoid marathon shifts. Roadhouse, for example, worked more than 200 hours during the first two weeks of January 2017, including back-to-back 17-hour days. He followed that with a 21-hour day, according to his time slips. In all, his workload during that time yielded about 120 hours of overtime. Roadhouse’s time slips, obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act, show he worked 84 consecutive days from January 1 to March 25, logging, on average, about 12 hours a day. Final worked every day in February 2017, including weekends, averaging about 12 hours a day, for the police department while also working a secondary job providing security at Male High School, according to records.