San Francisco supervisors grilled the city’s assistant police chief at a city hearing on Wednesday, asking why the police department has failed to address “systemic failures” of police overtime that are years-long, widespread and well-documented by the city.
“We have the same conversation every single year,” said Supervisor Shamann Walton, speaking during a budget and appropriations committee hearing. The police department underbudgets overtime by tens of millions each year, Walton said, and then comes to the Board of Supervisors asking for more.
All the while, the department’s internal controls for overtime remain poor, according to the city. An audit released in December found that the San Francisco Police Department’s overtime had surged to $108 million in the 2022-23 fiscal year, more than double the $53 million in overtime in the 2018-19 fiscal year. Officers were routinely violating policies around sick leave and working side gigs in private security, the audit found.
“When you see things in the news about mismanagement, people lose confidence,” said Supervisor Joel Engardio, who echoed Walton’s point that “every year, we see the same problems” around officers exceeding budgeted overtime.
Even Supervisor Matt Dorsey, a staunch police ally and former SFPD communications director, said the overtime problems lead the public to “lack confidence” in the department: “We need to fix this.”
Still, Dorsey and others voted unanimously to advance the latest request — $92 million in overtime for SFPD and the sheriff’s department — to the full Board of Supervisors, albeit without recommending that it be passed.
The police department says overtime growth is due to a staffing crisis; fewer officers means more time backfilling hours. And the department is down some 500 officers, it says.
“In my 33 years at the department, I’ve never seen this much overtime being spent,” said Assistant Chief David Lazar during a presentation to the six supervisors in attendance. The explosion in overtime costs, he said, “makes sense,” given the “crisis” of police staffing: The department has 1,466 full-duty staff, but the recommended level is 2,074.
Already this year, the department has lost 57 officers who retired or quit.
“As the shortage continued,” Lazar said, showing a graph of police staffing levels decreasing over time, “the overtime continued.”
SFPD overtime skyrocketed as staffing decreased
Overtime costs
Sworn-duty officers
$110M
2,000
$100M
1,800
$90M
1,600
$80M
1,400
$70M
1,200
$60M
1,000
$50M
800
$40M
600
$30M
400
$20M
200
$10M
2020
2021
2022
2019
2023
Overtime costs
Sworn-duty officers
2,000
$110M
$100M
1,800
$90M
1,600
$80M
1,400
$70M
1,200
$60M
1,000
$50M
800
$40M
600
$30M
400
$20M
200
$10M
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
Source: San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst. Note: Total overtime costs are aggregated by fiscal year. Chart by Kelly Waldron.
Still, the city’s audit detailed abuse and a dearth of internal regulation: 12 percent of officers were responsible for 32 percent of the overtime hours worked, the audit found, and 209 officers worked more than three times the ostensible limit.
Overtime cards had an “error rate” of 13 percent: Some lieutenants and sergeants approved their own overtime in violation of policy; at other times, overtime cards were missing required sign-off from supervisors.
There is “insufficient monitoring” of overtime “up and down” the department’s chain of command, said the author of the audit, Nicolas Menard of the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s office, during the hearing. Those who violate overtime policies rarely face discipline: “We didn’t see evidence,” Menard said, “of accountability.”
Officers also routinely took leave to work private security, an arrangement known as “10(b)” but blasted by Supervisor Jackie Fielder as a “Rent-a-Cop” program. This often happened on the same day officers called out sick.
That has a trickle-down effect: SFPD paid other officers at overtime rates to fill in for those working as security guards for businesses like Walgreens and Lululemon.
“Instead of serving the community, it seems that a group of officers is chasing private overtime pay,” said Fielder. “Their coworkers are left to pick up the slack by adding an additional overtime to pick up their duties.”
During the audit period, officers who were forbidden from working private security — they were high-users of sick time, and ineligible under the police union contract — worked 51,000 hours as security guards anyway.
Lazar, for his part, defended the 10(b) program, and said it has “contributed to reducing crime” by putting officers on the street, albeit as security guards in police uniforms, when they would otherwise be home. “It’s a great program,” he said. “I hope we can continue it and, at some point, expand it.”
The department has implemented 85 percent of the recommendations following the city’s audit, Lazar added, creating a new overtime dashboard, stronger oversight, and better tracking, among other changes.
Despite the city’s documentation of abuse, Mayor Daniel Lurie asked for another $61 million in overtime funds for SFPD in March, plus $30 million for sheriff’s deputies. That comes in the face of an $818 million deficit which the mayor intends to close by, in part, asking departments to slash 15 percent across the board.
That has meant programs offering free civil legal aid, for instance, are on the chopping block. Supervisors and nonprofits have raised the alarm about Lurie’s proposed cuts.
“Community organizations are having to justify every single nickel and dime,” said Fielder. SFPD, she said, should be held to the same standard.
“A million here, a million there might not be much to the police department, but it makes a ton of difference in some of the other parts of our budget,” said Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, who called the lack of overtime oversight “really concerning” given the $840 million police budget. "This is a problem."
Lurie’s initial budget is due June 1.
Senor Joe,
They pay their mortgages in Petaluma with it and it has been reliable for the 45 years I’ve been watching them.
After they get to 30 years they can defer retirement for another 3 years and make right at a half million a year for each of those 3 years of continuing their usual piss poos policing and teaching the rookies to do the same.
Only way to break the cycle is to return to electing our Police Chief with the Power to hire and fire and suspend w/out pay like we had for SF’s first 85 years.
If our chosen new Chief doesn’t fulfill the Planks of their Platform we vote em out.
“It might take you a couple of cycles but eventually you’ll get one who does what they say they’re going to do and then you can keep em for 32 years like you did me.”
Michael Hennessey said that.
Man got more votes than any politician in SF History.
go Niners !!
h.
SFPD went on strike for 3 years because they did not like who the voters elected as District Attorney. London Breed did not make SFPD go back to work before voters swept her out.
Now that Mayor Lurie is in charge and SFPD have decided to do their jobs again, not satisfied with merely getting paid for 3 years of sloth, are now gouging the city for even more overtime.
In the middle of all of this, as SFPD was just awakening from their slumber, before they actually did anything, crime rates began falling.
Not all cops abuse the system. But the system is set up to allow cops to abuse it. And SFPD as a whole, as law enforcement, upholds the thin blue line, ignoring these violations and protecting the offenders.
Lazar said that the most important goal for him is the public’s “perception of safety”, not the actual low crime data. Is that because unlike the data, public perception can be influenced by the fear campaigns that get our tough on crime politicians elected?
Haha, nobody can point the finger at anyone without implicating themself. And nobody wants to because they all profit from it. They say why be stingey when “it’s not my money.”
San Francisco has the lowest crime rate of any major city in the U. S. There is no crime crisis that justifies the obscene amount of money spent on the SFPD. This is merely a tried and true scam used by the right-wing for decades. Create fear and paranoia of a “crime wave”and claim to be able to fix it with harsh measures including more policing and harsher sentences and get elected. This is a strategy that the right-wing is using throughout the U. S: lying about crime rates in a city or county, repeat the lie incessantly, create fear and paranoia, and use that to get rid of progressive D.A.s who are using proving methods of lowering crime by addressing root causes. And use it to elect right-wing politicians like Lurie. His agenda is blatant here: the corrupt SFPD should get all the money they want with no accountability and the non-profits who actually help people in need should get nothing. How very Trumpian of him. Eventually I hope we can recall this creep.
Chasing the bus: The supervisors and mayor will say all sorts of stuff, but they’ll approve the overtime.
DEFUND THE POLICE!
Great reporting, thank-you! There is something very odd about the graph titled, “SFPD overtime skyrocketed as staffing decreased”. Assistant Chief David Lazar is quoted as saying (referencing this graph) , “As the shortage continued, the overtime continued”. But that’s NOT what the graph shows: beginning in 2021 there is a much, much steeper increase in overtime compared to a leveling off in the number of sworn duty officers. In fact, overtime almost triples from $40M to $110M, while the number of officers is pretty constant (between 1,600 and 1,700). I think the SFPD owes the Supervisors and the public a better explanation as to what is really happening with overtime. I understand that policing is a tough job, but this is a clown show.
13% error rate?! Perfect, they get 13% less than what they requested.
Minus all of the 10(b) overtime.
I’d like to know if the same number of hours of work are occurring, regardless of it it’s overtime or otherwise.
If they, in their currently under-staffed state, are working the same number of hours as a fully-staffed department would without any overtime, then maybe it’s justifiable?
Good reporting, thanks. Would be great to see a link to the exact government document of which “10(b)” is presumably a part. Keep up the good work.
How about the two vans of sheriff deputies dropped at 16th plaza yesterday? Overtime?
The title of the article made me laugh. Why hasn’t SFPD done anything about their officers gaming the system? It’s like asking why Jeffrey Epstein didn’t self-report when he snuck into the local Girl Scouts events – to ask the question is to answer it. This entire town is corrupt and the cops are no exception and maybe even worse – since they also have guns, and drones, and cameras, and tanks, and helicopters. Nothing will change.
I have a friend who works as a medic in SFFD and says they are constantly getting assaulted and punched, kicked, broken bones by people the SFFD ambulance medics “save”. She’s told me the SF cops could care less and make zero arrests when it happens. They are left to fend for themselves, only told by their commanders to get back to work. The District Attorney is even more disinterested and can’t prosecute a fly. Guess we might need more OT to get the job done! Too bad our City can’t learn from other more effective cities.
It seems outrageous to us wage earners, but largesse is one of our city’s many employee perks. It worked okay while city revenues kept growing, but from hereon, times will become very tough. Years ago, Aaron Peskin recommended an independent auditor position to investigate and reveal inflated expenditures. Members of the BOS are among the city’s lowest paid workers. If we compare the salaries of the city’s department executives and senior managers with their effectiveness and accomplishments (such as Department of Homelessness, City Assessor, etc.), would we still think the amount of SFPD’s OT is unusual? Does the BOS dare to reduce the compensation of the city’s top earners? Or maybe just ask them to please do their jobs as if their livelihoods and our well-being depended on it.
Let me guess same supes that said defund the police. Gfys.
Defund the non-profits due to continued fraud.
Or fund auditors that will catch the bad ones and reap recovered funds for the City
This is just the Supervisors on their high horse. There are two separate issues. Police actually working more OT, which is explainable given their low staffing and new Mayors push to reduce crime, and secondly, budgeting for OT. When City departments beed to balance their books for the budget, they often cut OT, knowing they are going to work it anyway. This happened during COVID, when there were fights to reduce the police departments budget. They just cut their OT budget to make the whole thing look smaller. And the Board approved it. They either do or should see these cuts in relation to past years. But they approve the budgets anyway and then complain when asked for more.
The picture that have of those officers, a Mayor’s Inauguration should be Class A jacket with the Service Hat. Everyone thinks they have to on a COPs TV show. Have respect for those who have given the ultimate sacrifice in the same uniform.
Wow
Lawlessness is lawlessness
Law enforcement is necessary to help regain law and order in SF;
however , where are the police ?
When you call , it can take forever for them to show up!
They keep saying they are short staffed ; yet they want the taxpayer to pay for all this ot?
I think it is time to consider getting police from other areas. Like a nurse travelling program .
Cops from elsewhere would be shocked at what they see on the streets and take action.
Also, until the dept can take of the crime and calls , they should not be allowing officers to work for private business .
The grift continues as everyone tries to take taxpayer money ,
We deserve a hardworking , dedicated , ethical police department that demonstrates an ability to clean up the crime.
Why has this department been a challenge for so long and why are the citizens so upset with the police ability to help to date ?