The Mass. Police Agencies settle with US: $200,000 payment over ‘false claims’

The Boston Globe reports:

A consortium of 49 local law enforcement agencies from Middlesex and Essex counties will pay the US government $200,000 to settle allegations that the group made “false claims’’ about how it used several hundred thousands of dollars in federal grants, the US Justice Department said yesterday.

The government had provided a number of grants to the North Eastern Massachusetts Law Enforcement Council in 2001 and 2002, to help local police identify threats and prevent acts of violence at more than 500 public schools in the region.

The council certified in a 2003 filing that it used the money for that purpose, according to a Justice Department statement.

But a subsequent investigation by the department’s office of the inspector general found that the council “had not properly accounted for several hundred thousand dollars of grant funds,’’ the Justice Department said. The department declined to specify what the law enforcement council did wrong.