From the front page of yesterday’s Warwick Beacon.

[Taxpayer activist Rob] Cote claims that in the past four years the fire department has averaged about 1,400 shift changes a year, totaling about 5,600 Form 109s that are supposedly missing or have been purposefully disposed of. This could incur a maximum fine of $2.8 million, which the city would be on the hook for, according to Cote.

Cote filed an Access to Public Records Act request (APRA) in May and December of 2016 to get any documents pertaining to changes of shift within the Warwick Fire Department.

Fourteen hundred shift changes per year times four years requires 5,600 forms, each of which must be signed by four people in authority. What happened to those 5,600 forms? Where they destroyed? That is what Warwick Fire Chief James McLaughlin claims. Or did they never exist? If the latter, those 5,600 shift changes were never authorized and, therefore … what? The firefighters must pay back that money? (Asking honestly. Legal-types are encouraged to chime in on this point.)

Terrific work by Rob Cote, who worked for over a year rounding up all of this information and (lack of) documents to expose what is a scam, one way or the other — and could well turn out to be a costly one to taxpayers.

One other item from the article. This is called foreshadowing. (Emphasis added).

In response to allegations from Cote that fire department personnel had used the change of shift system to subvert using vacation or sick time in order to go work other jobs or even attend a softball tournament in Maine, McLaughlin said that he had seen no evidence of such activity, and if anybody has proof of such accusations to please bring it forward.

As they teach first year law students, never ask a question you don’t know the answer to … and government officials should never ask for proof of shenanigans unless they are 100% certain it does not exist.