EAST LONGMEADOW — Over more than a decade, Sgt. Michael Ingalls of the East Longmeadow Police Department collected $35,000 in bonus pay he was not entitled to.
That’s according to an 2024 investigative report the town commissioned and that The Republican recently obtained through a public records request.
The report, by Boston-based Discrimination and Harassment Solutions, found that Ingalls received a bonus for officers with certain college degrees, a pay incentive for which Ingalls did not qualify. He was suspended for 30 days without pay and required to make a $7,000 restitution payment to the town.
Ingalls and Police Chief Mark Williams said they were unable to comment and deferred questions to the Town Manager’s Office.
“We took the complaint seriously, hired an investigator, went through that investigation, added up all the findings and evidence and doled out our punishment and moved forward,” said Tom Christensen, the East Longmeadow town manager.
Christensen said he is not concerned with Ingalls’ leadership.
The restitution amount was decided between the town and its legal team, and Christensen said he could not comment on the conversation with the attorney.
The issue came to light when someone whose name is redacted in reports filed a complaint in 2024 about the issue with the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission.
Per the police union’s contract, officers are paid an annual bonus if they have degrees in criminal justice. The extra pay ranges from an additional 5% for an associate degree to 12.5% for a master’s degree. Ingalls was receiving extra pay for an associate degree in criminal justice, but he had not completed the degree.
After Williams took over as chief in 2021, he assumed that the information in the department’s systems about who qualified for the extra pay was correct and had been confirmed by previous department leaders, the investigation says.
Then in spring 2022, Williams was told that some officers could be mistakenly receiving education incentive pay, but it took him more than a year to act on the tip, the investigator found. Williams told the investigator that looking into the complaint was on his to-do list.
“He admits that he should have investigated the matter sooner,” the report says.
In summer 2023, Williams requested an audit, and officers had to confirm their degree information via email. Ingalls did not respond and “required additional prompting.”
Ingalls told the investigator he did not know he was getting extra pay and said he was “in shock” when he was told, the report says.
The investigator did not buy that. “This is difficult to believe, as the benefit was paid in a lump sum during the final pay period of January for ten consecutive years,” the report says. “According to Sgt. Ingalls, he never noticed that his last paycheck in January contained an extra amount of approximately $3,000.”
Ingalls’ resume listed Springfield Technical Community College, but didn’t explicitly say whether or not he earned a degree. “His resume is therefore ambiguous,” the report concluded. “A fair reading suggests this was done so intentionally.”
The person who complained to the POST Commission also took issue with Ingalls’ promotion over another candidate, but the report did not investigate that issue, as it had already been appealed, it said. When the complaint was made, Ingalls was a sergeant, a title he still holds, according to Williams.
Williams was also ordered to complete a five-day suspension for failing to investigate the education bonus pay issue, though the investigator empathized with him in her report that the problem predated him.
