The Virgin Islands government cut Carlos Aloyo three checks totaling $292,749.88 Thursday. Aloyo hadn’t been working extra hard for the money nor milking overtime rules like other extraordinarily well compensated peace officers. In fact, the St. Croix conservation enforcement officer’s windfall was the result of his being barred from doing his job.
In March 2023, Aloyo, represented by the United Steel Workers union, won an arbitration settlement against the Department of Planning and Natural Resources in which he’d claimed he had been improperly suspended after a 2019 rape allegation. DPNR did not pay Aloyo for more than a year until he filed a suit with the Superior Court July 15, also demanding interest on backpay. Ten days later, the money rolled in.
When retirement contributions, Social Security, and other employer-paid benefits are added in, the Virgin Islands government paid Aloyo $354,568.
In April 2019, a St. Croix woman told police Aloyo had come to her home one afternoon to return some personal items, according to a gruesome contemporary report that cited court documents no longer available online. An argument allegedly ended with Aloyo raping the woman — using his loaded government-issued firearm to silence her screams.
Aloyo, then 52, was arrested and charged with domestic violence-related assault, rape, possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a crime, grand larceny, discharging or aiming a firearm, and other offenses. He was also promptly suspended without pay from his job at DPNR.
Aloyo and his union filed a grievance May 7, 2019 contesting the suspension. Nearly four years later the case went to arbitration. The arbitrator said DPNR was within its rights to suspend Aloyo for his alleged actions but had failed to follow its own rules, which required approval from the governor for suspensions lasting longer than six months. The mistake meant the U.S. Virgin Islands owed Aloyo backpay, benefits, and seniority going back to Nov. 1, 2019.
By the time of the arbitrator’s ruling, criminal charges against Aloyo had long been dropped. The Attorney General’s Office requested the case be dismissed in June 2020. Superior Court Judge Jomo Meade left the door open to refile the charges in his ruling but to date they had not been.
On June 19, 2020, three days after the charges were dropped, Howard Forbes Sr., DPNR’s director of enforcement, wrote to the Division of Personnel requesting that Aloyo be fired, according to court records. He was not.
With the charges dismissed, the assault allegations were “nothing more than uncorroborated hearsay” and do not warrant continued suspension, the arbitrator wrote in court filings.
DPNR officials confirmed Wednesday Aloyo was still on suspension.
This was not the first time Aloyo had been suspended. The Feb. 13, 2019 edition of the Virgin Islands Daily News featured a cover photo of Aloyo helping set up a tent at the Agriculture and Food Fair while he was supposed to be working for DPNR. The apparent lie reportedly resulted in a five-day suspension.
