Standish dispatcher accused of stealing municipal gas

STANDISH, ME — Standish officials this week say they were shocked when an internal investigation into a municipal fuel account revealed a longtime and trusted dispatcher is suspected of stealing fuel for his personal vehicle.

In late December, the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office charged William W. Rice, 49, of 22 Richville Road, Standish, with misdemeanor theft and felony aggravated forgery after a camera captured him pumping fuel from a town gas pump into his own vehicle. The forgery charge stems from Rice’s subsequent alteration of fuel logs attributing the fuel usage to sheriff’s deputies’ vehicles.

While authorities can’t say exactly how much fuel Rice may have stolen, about 200 gallons of fuel is unaccounted for, dating back to June of 2011.

According to Town Manager Gordon Billington, Rice is on paid administrative leave “at the present time.” Rice, he said, has been employed by Standish for the last 15 years. He worked nights in the dispatch office, which is located at the municipal office complex on Route 35. While he kept fuel logs for the sheriff’s office, which contracts with Standish and has a satellite office within the municipal complex, Rice is considered a contracted employee of the town, Billington said.

“It was an absolute surprise,” Billington said Tuesday. “We never would have expected that.”

According to Fire/EMS Chief Brent Libby, Rice’s personal use of town fuel pumps was detected upon Libby’s in-depth review of procedures surrounding the town’s system of dispensing and logging of diesel and gasoline.

As Libby describes it, part of Rice’s job was to activate the fuel pumps on request of drivers of deputy’s cruisers as well as various town-owned vehicles including public safety, recreation, code enforcement and public works. The driver would gas up and then report to Rice, or to whichever dispatcher was on duty, how much fuel was used. The radio or cell-phone conversations were recorded. Rice would then input the amount, date and time in a computerized fuel log.

Libby said the system has effective checks and balances, one of which is the fuel pump itself, which also records how much fuel is dispensed. When monthly records came back “with a consistent margin of error” between the pump and dispatcher data records, Libby installed a video camera aimed at the fuel pumps to see if drivers weren’t precisely reporting their fuel usage.

“We weren’t expecting the results we got. We thought the amounts weren’t getting logged correctly, so it was a surprise since it wasn’t the outcome we were expecting,” Libby said.

Upon further review of the log discrepancies, authorities discovered Rice had recorded fuel use by sheriff’s deputies who weren’t on duty at the time Rice indicated in the log.

Rice, who could not be contacted for comment, was summonsed and is scheduled to appear in Cumberland County Unified Court on Feb. 21.

According to Capt. Don Goulet, the sheriff’s office uses Wright Express cards for all deputy vehicles except for the Standish deputies. Each cruiser has its own designated cards. Since deputies patrol far-flung areas of the county far from the Portland headquarters, the fuel cards are necessary. In Standish, however, where deputies work out of the municipal offices, the fuel cards aren’t used, and Standish also pays for the fuel, as part of the contract.

“In terms of the current system, we’re OK with it. No system that you have is completely bulletproof,” Goulet said. “If someone wants to manipulate the system, they’ll find a way to do it. But there are checks and balances and that’s how this particular situation was brought to light.”

Read the story here.

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