50-Plus Sanitation Employees Found Profiting Off Scrap Metal

The Conflicts of Interest Board, in the largest complaint it has ever issued against city employees, is suspending more than 50 sanitation department workers for using department trucks to collect and sell scrap metal for their own profit.

An additional six workers were arrested in June of 2007 on charges of official misconduct and violating state environmental laws, according to a release put out by the city's Department of Investigation.

Workers targeted in the investigation were seen or videotaped stripping metal from broken air-conditioners, selling the pieces to Pine Scrap Metal in Queens, and pocketing the money. The many city employees suspended were acting separately, according to a DOI spokeswoman, Diane Struzzi.

One employee, Michael Castro, 43, was observed using his sanitation truck compactor to break open an air-conditioner, giving him access to a metal part and in the process releasing ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon into the air.

Following Mr. Castro's actions, the DOI strategically placed CFC-free air-conditioners along the routes of five collection crews in Queens in what proved to be a successful trap, with nine employees taking the bait, according to the DOI's release.

"These DSNY employees took keeping discarded items on their routes to a whole new level," the DOI commissioner, Rose Gill Hearn, said in a statement.

"The City is attempting to reduce pollution in a wide variety of ways, including through its recycling program," she said, adding that the suspended sanitation employees have "a disregard for those efforts" and "are part of the problem."

According to the DOI's report, the sanitation department's protocol for handling scrap metal is for workers to collect and transport it to the city's contracted recycling facility Sims Hugo Neu in Long Island City.

Sims Hugo Neu originally reported the problem in September 2006, when its employees saw sanitation workers leave their facility with metal scraps stowed on the sides of their trucks.

The sanitation department would not comment.