The Delaware Department of Justice confirmed this week that former Bethany Beach police officer Robert L. Talbot pleaded guilty in Sussex County Superior Court on Wednesday, Aug. 27, to one count of Theft by False Pretense and one count of Offering a False Instrument for Filing. Talbot, 29, initially faced 51 charges in his Marcy 10 indictment by a Sussex County grand jury, including multiple counts of Forgery, Official Misconduct, Theft and Offering False Instrument for Filing.
The charges, stemming from a criminal investigation by the Bethany Beach Police Department and the Delaware Department of Justice, resulted from falsification by Talbot of overtime documents and medical reimbursement requests that were submitted by Talbot and paid by the Town of Bethany Beach. The investigation followed a 2007 audit of the Bethany Beach Police Department overtime budget.
Talbot pled guilty before Judge E. Scott Bradley, who immediately sentenced Talbot to one year imprisonment for each charge and then suspended that sentence to one year of probation for each charge. Talbot was ordered to pay restitution of $3,132.22 to the Town of Bethany Beach, the full amount considered by the town to have been improperly received between the overtime and medical reimbursement falsifications. In addition, Talbot agreed not to contest decertification by the Council on Police Training (CoPT) and agreed not to seek future employment as a police officer.
Talbot, a 2.5-year veteran of the Bethany department who had previously worked there for several summers as a seasonal officer, was placed administrative leave from the department when the BBPD first began its internal investigation in September 2007.
BBPD Capt. Ralph Mitchell told the Coastal Point in March that the suspicion of Talbot’s misdeeds had arisen within the department last September, as the result of an internal audit, and that the BBPD had begun its own internal investigation at that time, placing Talbot on leave. The department enlisted the aid of the Delaware Attorney General’s office, and the two agencies completed independent investigations leading to the charges upon which Talbot was indicted on March 10.
Mitchell said the investigations had arisen when some within the department had noticed “discrepancies.”
“We started looking into it and it just started snowballing,” he said.
Mitchell said the issues with overtime were related to hours of overtime that Talbot had allegedly filed for but not worked. The charges related to the medical reimbursement, he said, involved breaches in the guidelines under which officers receive a yearly allotment of reimbursement.
Talbot was known widely to have had a life goal of becoming a police officer and to have ambitions to become a state trooper. Mitchell, in March, called the allegations against the officer “surprising” in that light.