A Department of Justice audit on $550,000 granted to the Anaheim Police Department for a homeless program found $23,107 in unrelated grant spending.
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The Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs awarded the Anaheim PD the grant covering October 2021 to September 2026 to go toward uplifting public health and safety and helping individuals with mental health and/or substance use disorders, Department of Justice officials said in a recently released audit report.
By March 2026, when the audit was conducted, the Anaheim PD had spent $500,000 of the grant hiring two homeless assessment liaison officers, or HALO, to serve the city’s homeless population and fund the officers’ salaries, benefits and training.
But the Department of Justice audit on the grant spending “determined that the Anaheim PD was not following its internal policies and procedures regarding timekeeping.”
“We learned that HALO team officers do not complete, review, or certify their own timesheets. Rather, the HALO sergeant completed a group timesheet every 2-week pay period on a word processing document, based on personal knowledge of the officers’ schedules, and he submitted the group timesheet to the Anaheim PD payroll technicians for entry,” the report said.
“Inadvertent” timekeeping errors totaled $23,107 “in unallowable personnel costs,” the DOJ report said.
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The Anaheim PD did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Anaheim is Orange County’s most populous city with some 350,000 residents and the largest homeless population in the county, with more than 1,432 people experiencing homelessness, according to the county’s most recent Point in Time Count at the beginning of the year.
According to the Police Department’s proposal for the grant funding, 13% of all service requests being received by the department were related to mental health crises from people experiencing homelessness.
The audit said the Anaheim PD found some success as a result of the grant and experienced a “reduction in public safety calls related to homelessness, diverted approximately 20,000 dispatch calls annually for years 2024 and 2025, and established controls for budget management.”
The Department of Justice made a series of recommendations to Anaheim PD for administering grant funds, including requiring the department to “develop and implement controls” for its payroll and timekeeping processes and to “remedy $23,107 in unallowable personnel costs.”
The Anaheim PD agreed to comply with the Justice Department’s recommendations, according to a letter to a DOJ audit manager signed by Police Chief Manuel Cid and included in the audit report.
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