Law enforcement is hard, dangerous work, and police officers in the nation’s capital deserve every cent they earn. But when certain cops pocket more overtime than their base salaries, something’s clearly wrong. Don’t blame rank-and-file officers, however. Poor management by the Metropolitan Police Department’s command staff allowed just 50 D.C. police officers to pocket more than $2.8 million in overtime last year, as The Examiner’s Bill Myers recently reported. Phil Mendelson, D-at large, chair of the D.C. Council’s Judiciary Committee, has promised to hold oversight hearings on excessive police department overtime next month. That the problem is not limited to either the D.C. police department or District government was seen earlier this year when The Examiner exposed the $70 million of overtime that resulted in Metro employees being able to manipulate the system’s retirement program so that they receive pensions that exceed their base salaries.
The problem is evident elsewhere as well. Nearly every member of Fremont, Calif.’s police and fire departments, for example, earned more than $100,000 lastyear, mostly due to extensive time-and-a-half. One of the first studies on the use of overtime in policing was done in 1998 for the Department of Justice by University of Albany researchers. They concluded that, while overtime was generally “overused, misused and half-heartedly controlled,” it could not be totally eliminated. However, large, undetected overtime earnings by individuals or units within a police department “reflects the inability of an organization to know, in a timely manner, what is happening … Repeated surprises indicate a lack of analysis.” Controlling overtime, the study concluded, requires leadership at the top command level where policy is made. Yet low-level supervisors are usually blamed for approving excessive overtime, even though they are often the least able to control it as they juggle the demands of vacations, injuries, retirements, special events coverage — and court appearances, in particular.
Most of MPD’s overtime is racked up by police officers waiting to testify in court. The situation does not appear to have improved much since 2001, when the D.C. Criminal Justice Coordinating Council found that only a quarter of the officers who showed up at felony trials actually testified. Overtime for extra patrols in crime hot spots is well worth the cost, but city taxpayers are still being forced to pay many police officers a premium just to sit around in court all day. This is a management problem that Police Chief Cathy Lanier and her top commanders must address effectively now to protect their department’s credibility.
