To sleaze or not to sleaze? Keller and Geier need to fire Simon Drobik.

- If Mayor Tim Keller and Albuquerque Police Chief Mike Geier don't fire officer Simon Drobik they will support and defend sleaze and corruption at APD.

- Human Robot Officer Simon Drobik made $192,973 last year, making him the highest paid city government employee.

- Drobik put in for 2,809 hours of OT in 2018. Drobik billed the taxpayers for 5,063 hours of work in 2018.

To sleaze or not to sleaze? To accept and reward corruption, or to punish it immediately so it does doesn't spread and become a routine way of doing business?

Those are the questions and decisions that Albuquerque Police Chief Mike Geier will have to answer and make in the next few days or weeks as he determines what to do with Albuquerque's human robot and sleaze overtime king, Officer Simon Drobik.

If Geier doesn't fire Drobik, and his former supervisor, as the Civilian Police Oversight Agency has recommended, then he will have embraced sleaze and corruption and wrongdoing at APD. And that will mean that honest cops who aren't trying to rip off taxpayers by claiming massive and unbelievable amounts of overtime will have no incentive to be honest and to act with honor and integrity.

It Geier doesn't fire Drobik and his former supervisor, it will mean that the game is lost for every city resident who believes that cops must be honest and trustworthy. It will mean that anyone who thinks that public servants must be honest and that elected and appointed officials are required to hold themselves and others to those standards will have to leave this city.

If Geier doesn't fire Drobik it will mean that the Albuquerque Police Department is rotten to the core and that all the talk about police reform is bullshit. It will mean that Mayor Tim Keller, who promised reform, is a fraud, fake, phony—whatever you want to call him—and is just just another disgusting, smiling, hack politician. And if Drobik isn't fired, it will mean that neither Geier nor Keller care that sleazy Drobik has ripped off all of us taxpayers. It will mean that they think it's the correct and right thing to do for cops or any other public employees to cheat us taxpayers.

These are strong words, I know, but they're true. Geier and Keller are facing a moment of truth. They either care about honest government and an honest police department, or they embrace sleaze and celebrate and encourage corruption. It really is that simple. They have a choice: sleaze and corruption, or honesty.

How sleazy is Drobik? Well, he is alleged to have violated APD rules at least 51 times in 2018 alone in claiming a total of 2,809 overtime hours. Those OT hours were in addition to the 2,254 regular hours that Drobik allegedly worked last year. In total, Human Robot Drobik billed taxpayers for 5,063 hours of work last year. How sleazy is that? Well, a regular work year at 40 hours a week comes to 2,080 hours.

Our Sleazy Simon violated APD policy—that's right, violated APD written policy—51 times in 2018, according to the CPOA. How? He worked chief's overtime while he was on call as the department's public information officer. APD's policy clearly states that cops can't work chief's OT while they're on call. So Drobik was getting paid overtime for being on call, and at the same time was getting paid overtime for working chief's overtime.

That's only a little vile, isn't it?

And Drobik's supervisor at the time, who we have to presume knew those rules, signed off on Sleazy Simon's excessive and unbelievable overtime hours.

This story is more than about just one cop claiming ridiculous overtime hours. It's been going on for years and there are more than 100 other APD cops whose overtime hours need to be investigated. Of the city's 250 top paid employees—we really can't call them “workers”—in 2018, 123 were cops. Did they violate the same rules that Sleazy Simon did?

And get this, our miracle human working machine Simon Drobik has been one of the city's top paid employees since 2012. We have to figure that he was violating the same APD rules for all those years as well. So, Simon has probably logged hundreds, if not thousands of APD rule violations by claiming all that overtime.

And here's the other thing. Sleazy Simon had supervisors who had to sign off and approve all those crazy overtime hours. They knew the rules, they knew that Simon was violating them and yet they approved it! There might be hundreds, and maybe thousands of rule violations that were approved by Simon's supervisors. And you can bet that many of those supervisors are high ranking honchos at APD today. Talk about a culture of corruption. It goes all the way to the top.

Some people will dismiss Sleazy Simon's miraculous ability to work more than 5,000 hours in a single year as, well, a little violation of the rules. You know, stretching things a bit, a little white lie. That's because most people think of police corruption as a planted handgun, a shakedown of a business or cops stealing stuff from people they've arrested.

But this, people, is just as bad because it's a shakedown of you the taxpayers, and it's a shakedown that's been permitted by the highest ranking people at APD. The cops—at least Sleazy Simon and his pals—are the crooks! Say that again. The cops are the crooks!

If Geier doesn't fire Drobik and his former supervisor—and everyone else who over the years approved these massive amounts of overtime pay—and if he doesn't ask the State Police to launch a criminal investigation into this, then APD is rotten to the core. And that harms the 99 percent of APD officers who aren't trying to scam the public.

Some people will try to excuse this scandal by saying that the people who approved Drobik's overtime pay were incompetent. That's bullshit; they knew the rules. They were complicit, and it's clear right now that Geier and Keller and the rest of APD's management don't give a crap about how our tax dollars are being wasted and stolen.

If Geier allows Drobik to retire instead of firing him, he will have dived into a massive, bottomless vat of sleaze. If Keller doesn't order Geier to fire Drobik, then he too will have willingly dived into the giant kettle of stenchy, filthy, vile, despicable sleaze.

So what is it, Michael and Timmy? Are you honest, or do you support corruption? Are you clean, or are you slime?

The whole world is watching.