Philadelphia Police Officer Deona Carter’s services will likely cost city taxpayers a half-million bucks this year, says the Philadelphia Daily News. That includes about $75,000 in salary and overtime -plus $425,000 that city attorneys yesterday agreed to pay to settle three federal lawsuits filed by people who say that Carter assaulted or wrongly arrested them. Carter, 29, remains on active duty. “She’s not fit to be a police officer,” said Leonard Villari, who represents the three plaintiffs in the civil-rights suits. “She’s cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars at this point, and there’s a strong possibility that she will cost the city even more money in the future.”
The police department has opened an investigation into whether Carter violated the department’s social-networking policy by posting a naughty photo of herself on MySpace in high heels, a skimpy blue dress, and her police hat. In 2008, Carter was suspended for 20 days for assaulting her neighbor, then trying to have her “falsely arrested” by telling responding officers that the neighbor had attacked her. Last summer, she was reprimanded for neglect of duty for showing up for court in “short pants and flip-flips.”