A Detroit fire lieutenant illegally padded his paycheck by submitting time sheets for hours he never worked, and his supervisors failed to stop it, according to a new investigation from the city’s Office of Inspector General.
The OIG found that Lt. James Hill-Harris, an arson investigator, “fraudulently overstated his hours worked by more than 150 hours,” relying on time sheets that didn’t match key-card activity, cellphone data, or daily activity logs at Detroit Public Safety Headquarters. The discrepancies date back as far as 2018.
In some instances, investigators found Hill-Harris was at home or even outside Detroit during hours he claimed to be on duty. Detroit Police Internal Affairs, which conducted its own review after the case was referred for criminal consideration, wrote that the data showed “a consistent pattern of Lieutenant Hill-Harris being at home or outside the City during hours he had reported as worked.”
A six-month stretch of payroll records between 2022 and 2023 showed he claimed 622 hours of overtime, including “43 hours of overtime in a single week.” Investigators estimated he may have received more than $120,800 in income tied to hours he didn’t work over a four-year span.
His father, Walter Harris, died fighting a deliberately set fire in 2008, which Hill-Harris said inspired him to become an arson investigator in 2011.
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Based on the allegations, the Michigan Commission on Law Enforcement Standards (MCOLES), which handles licensing for police, including arson investigators, stripped Hill-Harris of his certification.
Hill-Harris denied committing time fraud and denied missing work when he was on duty.
“Working remotely, work stacking, and clocking in/out from outside the City of Detroit network were widespread, accepted, and sometimes mandated practices within the unit,” his attorney Robert Burton-Harris is quoted as saying. “Mr. Hill-Harris is being singled out for engaging in practices that are common in the unit.”
The OIG also found that two supervisors — Chief Dennis Richardson and Captain Rance Dixon — failed to perform basic oversight that should have caught the fraud.
Richardson and Dixon “abused their authority by neglecting their supervisory responsibilities which contributed to a lack of accountability” for Hill-Harris’s overtime, the OIG wrote. The agency said both men approved or allowed time submissions without the documentation required under Detroit Fire Department rules.
Interviews conducted by Internal Affairs indicated Hill-Harris’s attendance problems were well-known in the unit. Multiple investigators described “longstanding attendance issues … that had gone unaddressed by unit supervisors,” and some said they believed “a personal friendship” between Richardson and Hill-Harris contributed to the lack of accountability.
Richardson disputed showing favoritism but acknowledged in a recorded OIG hearing that he did “a little digging” and found that several members of the unit, including captains and lieutenants, were clocking in and out of work remotely outside of the City of Detroit network.” He described the noncompliance as “widespread across the unit.”
He said he relied on captains to verify time sheets and did not consider it his responsibility to scrutinize lieutenants’ hours.
Dixon did not respond to the OIG’s draft findings and is considered not to have contested them.
In June 2023, the OIG referred the investigation to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, which requested an investigation from the Detroit Police Department. The Detroit Fire Department also conducted an internal investigation.
Although DPD “confirmed a consistent pattern” of “Harris being at home or outside the city during hours he had reported at work,” the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office declined to pursue criminal charges, citing insufficient evidence to meet the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The OIG emphasized its own administrative standard is lower and only requires that the allegations are “more likely than not” — a threshold that was clearly met, according to the report.
Even without criminal charges, Hill-Harris faced consequences. The Detroit Police Department sought to strip his law-enforcement certification, and on June 4, 2025, MCOLES permanently revoked it for “egregious misconduct involving his lack of accountability.”
In an interview with Metro Times, Detroit Fire Commissioner Chuck Simms says he fired Hill-Harris, but that decision was reversed after the fire union “provided some additional evidence on his behalf.” Hill-Harris was demoted two ranks and is back to fighting fires.
Simms says he took the allegations seriously and took several steps to prevent overtime fraud. The fire department hired a full-time civilian payroll manager, requires prior approval for overtime, conducts biweekly audits to determine if there are any payroll discrepancies, and mandated that employees physically clock in and out. As a result, Simms says, “We’re trending to have the lowest overtime in five years because of the safeguards.”
Inspector General Kamau C. Marable praised the work of Detroit police.
“We appreciate the thorough work of DPD, whose investigation greatly supported the OIG in completing our case,” Marable said. “Their partnership was instrumental in helping us identify time fraud and protect integrity in City operations.”