‘You have to pay to play.’ Probation officer fired for requiring payment from offender.
A longtime North Carolina probation officer has been fired for taking money from a man under house arrest.
The offender alleged that he gave probation officer Thomas Darnell Aker more than $200 for leave time to work additional hours or to visit his family, according to Aker’s Jan. 24 dismissal letter.
According to the dismissal letter, Aker used his personal cell phone to request money from the offender.
“You admitted to asking (the offender) for money through a text message on June 6, 2018, June 10, 2018 and July 6, 2018,” the dismissal letter states. “You also admitted texting (the offender) on June 17, 2018, with a message stating, ‘you have to pay to play’ when probationer requested additional leave time while under Electronic House Arrest (EHA) monitoring.”
Another offender also alleged that Aker made him pay $130 to $140 — money that was allegedly exchanged during office and home visits, according to the letter. But Aker denied that allegation, and, according to the dismissal letter, there was “no substantiated evidence” to support those claims.
Aker began his work for the state in 1993. He worked in the Durham area and earned about $50,000 a year. He could not be reached for comment this week.
But during a pre-disciplinary conference on Jan. 23, Aker said he “wanted to apologize to the managers for letting us down” and that he had “made a bad decision,” according to the dismissal letter.
Other probation officers terminated
Aker is one of more than 30 North Carolina probation employees who have been dismissed for inappropriate activities since 2016, according to records obtained by the Charlotte Observer.
About 2,000 probation officers work for the state. Their job is to keep tabs on offenders who are sentenced to probation as an alternative to prison and those who are on parole after being released from prison.
Among those who were fired:
▪ Probation officer Gregory Stephen Wood was fired in December 2016 after investigators found he sold a 45-caliber pistol to a man without checking whether he had a valid gun permit, according to his dismissal letter.
The man, who had been put under a domestic violence protective order, later used the weapon to murder his wife, according to Wood’s dismissal letter.
The state Office of Special Investigations also heard allegations that Wood “acted as a firearms dealer without going through the proper application and registration process,” according to his dismissal letter.
In 2017, he was convicted of selling a weapon with no permit.
In an email to the Observer, Wood acknowledged that he sold a gun without verifying the buyer had a proper permit. He said he sold the gun through Iwanna, a free weekly paper in western North Carolina that carries classified ads.
▪ Natasha Banks, an administrative secretary, was dismissed last year after evidence surfaced that she had been talking with jailed offenders by phone. Many of the conversations were about possible gang activity and “crimes to include cutting a woman in the face, and a shooting,” according to her dismissal letter.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Banks would not discuss the state’s allegations.
▪ Probation officer Elizabeth A. Bryant was fired in 2016 after pulling her service weapon on someone who verbally confronted her in a Dunkin Donuts parking lot in a western North Carolina town, according to her dismissal letter.
Bryant could not be reached for comment this week. But she told state officials that the person who confronted her was the aggressor, according to her dismissal letter.
▪ Probation officer Jamie Brian Lawson was fired after using his work vehicle to chase another motorist down the road at 90 miles per hour in the town of Danbury, north of Winston-Salem.
Lawson could not be reached for comment. But he told a state probation office investigator that he had followed the driver for about 10 miles in November 2016 after that motorist had yelled obscenities. At one point, Lawson pulled alongside the other vehicle, displayed his state badge and motioned for the driver to pull over, according to his dismissal letter.
Lawson told a state investigator that the other driver’s actions “were an immediate danger to the public and I acted the best way I knew at the time,” his dismissal letter states.
▪ Hannah Rowley Eckard, a probation officer from Catawba County, was fired in January after trying to terminate probation for an offender with two pending felony drug charges, in violation of court and agency policy, according to her dismissal letter.
Eckard denied knowing that the offender had pending felony charges, according to her dismissal letter.
Eckard would not comment for this story. But in a petition filed with the state Office of Administrative Hearings, she contends that she was discharged without just cause.
State records show that a number of other former probation officers were fired after fudging their time cards and mileage records or falsifying records to make it appear they had visited offenders when they hadn’t.
This story was originally published May 7, 2019 at 3:18 PM.
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