In an exclusive News 12 interview, the man at the center of a controversial report on the feasibility of folding Freeport and Hempstead village police departments into the Nassau County Police Department denied allegations that the report was plagiarized.

As News 12 has reported, Nassau County contracted former NYPD Detective Richard "Bo" Dietl for $24,000 and received a 13-page report about the police department consolidation.

Village officials from Hempstead and Freeport say they were left in the dark regarding the report. The $24,000 total for the study meant it didn't need Legislature approval.

Some lines in Dietl's police study appear to have been copied verbatim from a separate study done by a California consulting firm in 2013. News 12 sent the Nassau report to the California firm's president, Richard Brady, for examination.

"Anyone accusing me of plagiarizing something? That's offensive to me," Dietl told News 12. "It wasn't like they picked me out of a hat and said, 'let's give it to Bo.' They know I do a good job. I've been in business for 30 years."

Dietl says he submitted the 13-page report - done by one of his employees - to the county back in November. He says he has no idea if anyone ever saw it because he never heard another word about it from county officials.

After originally refusing to address the likenesses between the Nassau and California reports during the interview, Dietl conceded that there are what he called "boilerplates" - templates for writing reports like these - that could possibly explain similarities in the language. Still, he adamantly denies that he or anyone from his firm did anything wrong.

The former NYPD detective says he's tired of his name and reputation being dragged through the mud. As for the money he's still owed by Nassau County: "They can take the $24,000 and stick it because I did my job."

Dietl told News 12 that he spoke to the California firm's president and that they had come to an understanding. When News 12 spoke with Brady Tuesday afternoon, he said he stands by his statement that Dietl's firm plagiarized his company's report. Brady says that Dietl's firm changed the names of the communities and the actual police data. Other than that, the text is almost identical.