A California Highway Patrol officer who billed the state for overtime hours he never worked has beaten the department's yearslong effort to fire him, after an appeals court ruled a one-year suspension without pay was punishment enough. Officer Nathaniel Partridge checked his patrol car in almost four hours before his shift ended on one occasion, then drove 35 miles home, according to the case record — one of at least three times he was paid for overtime hours he did not work.
The California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, Division Eight, published its opinion Wednesday, holding that the State Personnel Board did not commit a manifest abuse of discretion when it reduced Partridge's penalty from termination to a one-year suspension, according to the Metropolitan News-Enterprise. Presiding Justice Maria Stratton authored the opinion affirming a trial court judgment that had already gone against CHP once before. As LAist reports, Partridge was paid $288.98 for three hours and 45 minutes of overtime he did not work, and CHP and dozens of other officers were fired in 2020 after the department moved to dismiss them over the scheme.
CHP had wanted Partridge fired outright, calling his actions inexcusable neglect of duty, dishonesty and misuse of state property. The department asked a Los Angeles Superior Court judge to override the suspension and reinstate the firing, but Judge Curtis A. Kin denied that petition for a writ of mandate in November 2023, ruling that while courts do not tolerate law enforcement dishonesty, existing case law does not automatically compel firing when a personnel board exercises its discretion to impose a lesser penalty, per the same account. The appellate court agreed this week, finding that a reasonable decisionmaker could have gone either way — dismissal or a one-year suspension — and that the personnel board had not overstepped its bounds.
A Six-Year Fight Through Three Forums
Partridge's case lingered for six years through state personnel hearings, a Department of Justice investigation and trial court proceedings before landing in the court of appeal, LAist notes. The State Personnel Board, which first imposed the one-year suspension, described his conduct as self-enrichment at the expense of the public's trust — even as it declined to back CHP's push for termination. Partridge had positive evaluations recommending him for promotion and a clean disciplinary record, factors that appear to have weighed in the board's decision to spare his job.
His attorney, David Mastagni, said the ruling reflects fundamental fairness, according to LAist's reporting. CHP officers caught up in the broader East Los Angeles probe maintained that logging unworked overtime hours after finishing physical assignments was a widespread station practice, built on the understanding that officers remained available on-call even after checking in their vehicles — an argument the Metropolitan News-Enterprise reports influenced how administrators weighed intent and punishment.
How the Scheme Came to Light
The internal probe traces back to March 2018, when CHP Captain Chris Margaris audited 2016 and 2017 overtime records at the East Los Angeles station and uncovered recurring billing discrepancies tied to Caltrans enforcement details, according to MyNewsLA. LAist reports the East Los Angeles patrol division ran up an overtime tab three times that of Southern California's largest division, and CHP publicly identified the practice following a 2019 audit that initially estimated fraudulent overtime compensation at roughly $360,000. Investigators alleged the overtime was part of a long-running effort at the station to fabricate hours, with officers routinely billing eight hours of overtime for shifts that lasted only three to four hours through state-funded programs known as CZEEP and MAZEEP, according to CBS Los Angeles. That outlet also reported investigators alleged officers fabricated traffic warnings and motorist assistance logs to cover fake High Occupancy Toll lane shifts.
The scheme operated undetected for years in part because front-line supervisors responsible for catching timekeeping fraud were themselves participating in it during graveyard shifts that fell outside normal managerial hours, criminal complaints filed by the California Attorney General's Office revealed, per MyNewsLA's reporting. In February 2022, Attorney General Rob Bonta filed 302 criminal counts against 54 officers, alleging they defrauded the public of more than $200,000, LAist reports.
Most Officers Avoided Felony Convictions
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen dismissed felony wage theft and fraud charges against 48 CHP officers in December 2022 after they satisfied restitution requirements through a court-offered misdemeanor diversion program, according to AP News. LAist reports that ultimately 52 officers accepted the deal, which reduced felony charges to misdemeanors and dismissed them entirely once the money was repaid — over the Attorney General's objections. Two officers rejected the offer and proceeded toward preliminary criminal hearings instead, per AP's reporting.
CHP had forbidden the overtime practice for five years by the time the scandal broke, and department leadership characterized the East Los Angeles station's timekeeping culture as abhorrent and an isolated anomaly among the agency's 103 offices statewide. Former CHP Chief Mark Garrett emphasized at the time that the abuses were confined to that single station, not a statewide pattern, the same AP report notes. Partridge's case, resolved this week after six years of litigation, stands as one of the last unsettled threads of a scandal that mostly wrapped up through diversion deals rather than trials or firings.
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