'Badge charities' rarely sued by state

HOUSTON—They risk their lives to protect ours.

And in working dangerous streets, they sometimes pay the ultimate sacrifice.

So when the phone rings asking for help, we tend to give. In fact, in one year alone, $83 million was donated to so-called badge charities—law enforcement causes raising money in Texas: from retired cops, to narcotics cops, cop alliances, cop associations, cop coalitions, even a cop museum.

But guess what? Too often, most of your money never makes it to the charitable cause. An analysis of Internal Revenue Service filings by the 11 News Defenders reveals the vast majority of badge charities spend a high percentage of donations on professional fundraisers, rather than on services directly benefiting the charitable mission.

For the Chepachet, Rhode Island-headquartered Police Officers Safety Association, it would mean ordering up a large pizza, and the charity only getting a single slice. The rest of the donations, 85 percent in 2007, were spent on professional fundraising costs.

Or imagine donating a bicycle to the Law Enforcement Education Program, and the Troy, Michigan charity only keeps the handle bars. The rest of the money, 86 percent, went toward professional fundraisers.

Call it the disappearing dollar act. For every buck that’s donated, outside for-profit fundraisers hired by these charities often pocket 80, 85, sometimes 90 percent. It’s an “abracadabra” that leaves only a handful of pennies for the charity itself.

But what happens from there can be more alarming. The Police Officers Safety Association’s mission is police training and education, but much of that training consists of short online video clips that police experts say simply address obvious, common sense police matters.

One clip, titled “Blending In,” claims its information comes from a “federal agent.” But the expert advice consists of wearing a pair of jeans and a baseball cap and “you can blend for a local anywhere.”

“It’s laughable, I mean it really is,” said Mark Stephens. He’s a 26-year veteran police officer whose career has covered everything from street patrols to narcotics and other undercover investigations.

In another video tip on shooting a pistol with gloves on, the instructor advises to “jettison one of the gloves” as he dramatically removes the glove from his firing hand.

“Hah hah, what do you say to that,” Stephens said. “This is just common sense stuff, it’s not necessarily officer safety training.”

Stephens said that if he showed the video tips to any police academy, “you’d get laughed out of the room, you just would.”

But The Police Officer Safety Association told the 11 News Defenders there’s much more to their charitable efforts—like full-length two hour videos, in-person training seminars, and survivors’ assistance grants. The non-profit referred us to dozens of testimonials on its website.

But with all the money given to police charities, is anybody watching out for the donors?

“I oversee charitable organizations in Texas,” said Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

In a half-hour long interview with the 11 News Defenders, Abbott appeared proactive and tough-talking when it comes to overseeing badge charities.

“We’re very proud of the record we’ve achieved. If we find that organizations are pocketing too much money, and not dispensing it the way they should, we will bring a legal action,” Abbott said.

But since taking office more than six years ago, Abbot brought only four of those legal actions against badge charities. Two of those were multi-state investigations initiated by some other agency.

But the Attorney General emphasized his office has jurisdiction over all types of non-profits doing business in Texas.

“When you’re dealing with 70,000 organizations in the state of Texas, a lot of what we have to do is reactive,” he said.

With a staff of only seven dedicated to charities, Abbott conceded it’s hard to keep up.

“If we looked at one a day, it would take 70,000 days to get them all. If we looked at ten a day, it would take 7,000 days to look at them all,” Abbott said.

So remember the math next time the phone rings. It’s largely up to you the consumer to police your police charity donation.