Employee Busted by GPS Phone

A 21-year employee of the school system could lose his job after officials accused him of repeatedly leaving early - and stunned the worker with data it got by tracking his movements with a city-issued cellphone, The Post has learned.

In a precedent-setting case, administrative trial judge Tynia Richard recommended the firing of John Halpin, a veteran supervisor of carpenters, for cutting out before the end of his shift on as many as 83 occasions between March 2 and Aug. 9, 2006.

The evidence against Halpin, whose base pay is $300 a day, included time cards that suspiciously appeared stamped on the same machine, even though his duties placed him in different locations each day.

But there was a clincher: data gathered through the GPS system on Halpin's cellphone, which he accepted in 2005 without being told it might be used to trace his every move.