RTD ‘Black Hole’ in Thefts Investigated

With additional arrests of employees charged with stealing RTD bus parts, officials are now investigating what they fear may be a “black hole” in the transit district’s highly touted computer system to keep track of its $20-million inventory, The Times learned Thursday.

The latest problem unearthed in a continuing investigation of pilferage at the huge agency is that the district’s central computer system is failing to monitor bus parts used at the district’s 12 repair locations. The mechanics in RTD bus garages, who order parts out of warehouses, use a separate computer system that does not “talk” to the central warehouse computer, officials said.

$1.5 Million in Parts

Preliminary indications are that in a recent eight-month period, $1.5 million in parts are unaccounted for in the bus yards, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Herb Lapin, who is overseeing the investigation. “One bus supposedly had six transmissions ordered for it in an eight-month period,” Lapin said.

Because the bus yard computer system “has no tie to the main computer” there is a “big black hole” in the district’s ability to track its parts, Lapin said. He added that RTD employees and managers have merely adjusted the inventory when parts can’t be found and attribute it to computer errors.

“It never dawns on them that there may be some thievery going on,” Lapin said. “I can’t envision private industry doing this.”

RTD Police Chief Jim Burgess said that while the inventory control gaps do not appear to have been intentional, they have created an “environment and opportunity,” which may be related to a recent rash of thefts and the arrest of four employees.

Police have found that mechanics and bus garage employees, under tremendous pressure to quickly repair buses and return them to the street, have circumvented the records-keeping system on parts, he said. “They’ve been trading parts between divisions with no record,” he said.

RTD Inspector General Ernesto Fuentes won board approval Thursday to hire outside experts to conduct a major audit of the inventory control system. Citing recent arrests for parts theft, Fuentes said, “the (inventory tracking) system must have a leak in it.” Over the next several weeks a team of independent auditors will investigate, he said.

RTD transit police, who have been recently joined by district attorney’s investigators in the expanding investigation, are now focusing on theft at the downtown bus yard, where Lapin believes as much as $173,000 in parts may have been stolen.

Investigations of the inventory control system began after The Times earlier this year reported that the district had created a so-called “phantom warehouse” where $1.2 million in missing parts were “stored” in the RTD computer system. The warehouse did not actually exist, but its creation reduced the amount of parts the district otherwise would have had to write off as missing.

Meanwhile, police this month have arrested two more veteran RTD workers in connection with theft charges. Officials said one of the suspects was the “protege” of Franklin Jack, a transit district supervisor who was arrested earlier in the year for stealing bus parts and who skipped bail and is still a fugitive.

The mechanic who worked for Jack at the RTD’s Glendale maintenance division was identified as Everett Eugene Wigley II, 39, of Los Angeles. RTD transit police Sgt. Elston Burnley said Wigley was arrested July 6 on charges of embezzlement and theft for collecting RTD overtime pay while actually installing stolen RTD parts on private trucks and buses at Jack’s direction.

A 14-year RTD employee, Wigley was released on $3,000 bail and has been suspended from work without pay.

RTD bus driver Vernon Holloway, 45, has pleaded innocent to charges of using stolen transit district bus parts supplied by Jack on a charter bus that Holloway owned.

The fourth RTD employee arrested apparently had no ties to Jack and the others. Police identified him as Russell Rose, 37, of El Monte, who worked as a lead mechanic at the RTD’s Venice division.