NOBLESVILLE, Ind. -- A civilian employee of the Noblesville Police Department has been arrested on charges of official misconduct and theft.
Brandon "Brandi" Marcum turned herself in Thursday.
On March 21, the Noblesville Police Department opened an investigation into concerns of official misconduct. The investigation started as a result of a routine audit of records and the focus of the investigation was an employee responsible for taking receipt of parking ticket fines.
According to probable cause documents, a police captain reported that he had noticed an excessive number of parking tickets that were being voided out in the computer with no explanation. The captain said he had been obtaining the trash from the office space of receptionist Brandon "Brandi" Marcum. He said he was able to recover the parking ticket envelopes and cross reference them with the original parking violation entries from the computer. He noticed that several tickets had either been voided each day or had not been entered into the computer at all. Some envelopes found in the trash still showed unpaid in the computer.
Between March 21 and April 5, 38 tickets were found in Marcum's trash can that were either voided, not entered, or were still showing unpaid in the computer, according to the charging documents.
On March 31, a Noblesville police officer met with the court administrator to see if any parking tickets had been dropped off. Only one ticket was in the box and the parking ticket number was 51544. He later checked the computer entry for parking ticket 51544 and saw that the ticket had been voided and showed that the entry had been voided by USER: BMARCUM.
The same thing happened several more times throughout the course of the investigation, according to the documents.
As officers were watching real time video of Marcum's activities, they noticed that she was aware of the camera, so officers decided to speak with her.
After initially saying she wanted to talk to an attorney, Marcum allegedly denied any wrong doing and told a police captain that she had never taken any money. After talking more, Marcum allegedly told the captain that she had been voiding parking tickets that had actually been paid, and pocketing the money. She said she had been stealing the money since late 2014, according to the charging documents. In total, Marcum said she believed the amount of money stolen could be around $1,000.
Marcum had been a civilian employee since 1997 and was fired as a result of the investigation.
Noblesville Mayor John Ditslear issued the following statement about her arrest:
“I was shocked to learn of the misconduct committed by a former civilian employee. I want to thank the Noblesville Police Department for their work. After discovering this misconduct through a routine internal audit, it was their quick action and investigation that led to the employee's termination and arrest. When Noblesville became designated as a Second Class City, the controller’s office began the process of auditing all municipal finances and procedures involving cash transactions. As part of their findings, the city is reviewing and implementing new safeguards with regards to the handling of money to prevent such misconduct in the future.”
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