Prosecutors will seek 'modest' jail sentence, 'significant' community service for ex-Scranton cop guilty in theft
Apr. 24—A former Scranton police sergeant and admitted felon should receive a "modest" jail sentence and "significant" community service at the lower-income housing complexes he took money to patrol but never did, the prosecutor said.
Jeffrey Vaughn is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday by U.S. District Court Judge Robert D. Mariani on one count of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds.
Vaughn faces a maximum potential prison sentence of 10 years, but a memorandum signed Friday by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey St. John urged Mariani to balance Vaughn's record of "good, prior service" with the dishonesty that cost him his job and sat him at the defense table in federal court.
"The ultimate question, of course, is how precisely to balance the good that Mr. Vaughn did as a police officer ... against the deep injury to public trust that inevitably results when any police officer but, perhaps, especially, when a 'good' one, is found to have lied, cheated and stolen from the public at large, or, as in this case, from particular victim-members of the public," according to St. John's memorandum.
Vaughn's attorney, Paul Walker, declined to comment.
Vaughn, 51, was one of three city police officers placed on paid leave in 2022 amid an investigation of patrols of publicly funded housing. In August, Vaughn signed a plea agreement and admitted he accepted money for work he did not do at Midtown Apartments, Village Park Apartments, Hilltop Manor and Valley View Terrace.
"And while we all recognize that police officers are human beings, and are therefore subject to the same frailties that afflict all other human beings, there is still something deeply troubling when one violates the law, and particularly when one violates the law in a way that reflects dishonesty," the memorandum states. "Because whether totally founded or not, the citizen who comes to learn of this dishonesty naturally forms a worry, a disquieting concern that is something like — 'if a police officer is willing to lie and cheat the system just to fill his own pockets with a little extra money, what else would he be willing to lie and cheat about, if it suited his narrow purposes to do so?"
When Vaughn entered his plea in court in Jan. 26, he agreed to pay $11,234 in restitution.
He was paid an $80,527 base salary last year, city records show. The city terminated his employment Jan. 30, Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti said in an email.
Vaughn had been a city police officer since Dec. 11, 2000. He most recently worked as supervisor of the department's Street Crimes Unit, a small unit focused on finding guns and drugs.
On paper, Vaughn also worked a lot of extra-duty, in which entities reimburse the city for additional patrols.
In 2021, he made $16,409 in extra-duty pay, the third highest in the department. Between July 31, 2021, and April 22, 2022 — the time-frame cited in the federal investigation — he was paid for 77 extra-duty shifts at four housing complexes, city records show.
The Police Department regularly assigned police officers to work extra shifts at Scranton Housing Authority complexes. They were paid, at least in part, with federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
For at least some of the shifts Vaughn was assigned, he did not show up, prosecutors said.
A camera installed near his house showed he was home during many of the extra-duty shifts he was scheduled to work, prosecutors said. Had Vaughn gone to trial, federal authorities also would have presented interstate toll records to show he was not working at times he was being paid to patrol the housing complexes.
Erosion of faith in law enforcement is a social harm, "even years ago, back before it became fashionable to try and tear down 'the police' as an institution," St. John wrote in his memorandum. The harm is keenly felt in an age "when there are an array of bad actors who would, for their own cynical ends, try to paint our entire justice system as unfair and corrupt to its very core."
"A low income housing project spends extra money on security for the benefit of its lower income residents, and some of the police officers who sign up for the shifts and pocket the money don't even bother to show up," the memorandum states, seemingly the first public acknowledgement from investigators that others may have been involved.
"Talk about ammunition for the cynics," it continued. "But this Court should not be cynical."
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney's office declined to comment on the investigation. The office did not respond to a separate inquiry about the language used in the memorandum and if it was intended to refer to others.
Aside from Vaughn, two others placed on leave amid the investigation were Paul Helring, then a patrolman, and Detective Sgt. David Mitchell. Neither has been criminally charged. Attempts to reach them, and their attorneys, were unsuccessful.
Helring, 47, a former police union president, coordinated the Police Department's extra-duty program and approved nearly all extra-duty assignments until early April 2022, records show. He also made the most money working extra-duty in 2021: $22,933.
Helring, who was hired in March 1999, was awarded a disability pension in August, about a week before Vaughn agreed to plead guilty. He receives about $3,549 a month.
Mitchell, 44, remains on paid leave. A city police officer since March 1999, he received a $83,749 base salary last year and was paid $18,770 in extra-duty pay in 2021, the year's second highest total.
Contact the writer: jkohut@timesshamrock.com, 570-348-9100, x5187; @jkohutTT on Twitter.
