If they all quit everybody else would be better off.
But you are delusional if you think anybody as dumb as a US cop is giving up $100/hr for sitting at a desk pretending to do paperwork just because someone wants to take video of it and never review it.
> If they all quit everybody else would be better off.
Look, I get where you’re going, but if you think about what would _actually_ happen, it would definitely be much worse if they suddenly had to rehire the majority of the force.
I fail to see how you can get much worse than the systemic corruption and internal police gangs we already have while we pay them more than a top neurosurgeon.
It's not fraud if it's the point. Oakland's government isn't poorly run from the perspective of the criminals, in and out of government, profiting off of the dysfunction.
The department is understaffed by hundreds of officers forcing them to work double shifts in a lot of cases at time-and-a-half pay. This is a very dangerous situation for the city to be in as that drives more officers to quit and with the financial impact already sustained will force future cuts creating a downward spiral that will be felt in the crime stats.
> A recent report by several civilian city unions found that over the past 15 years, even when department staffing increased, overtime continued to go up. From 2011 to 2024, staffing increased by nearly 9%. Over the same period, overtime went up by almost 200%.
Some quick googling seems to indicate that Oakland's population also increased nearly 15% in the same time frame. And then, of course, COVID wreaked havoc on everyone in the early 2020s. Crime rates went up, but police staffing remained the same, so more opportunities for overtime?
edit: actually, it looks like Oakland froze police staffing completely in the wake of the George Floyd event, and then cut the OPD budget by $15 million and also reduced sworn officer staffing from 780 to 730. Eliminated 50 police officer jobs.
> Lieutenant Timothy Dolan, a 26-year veteran who leads the traffic unit and serves as vice president of the OPOA police union, was paid $493,247 in overtime in 2024. Combined with his salary and other pay, this netted him a $711,000 paycheck, making him OPD’s highest-paid employee — a title he’s held for several years now. His pay was almost double that of the chief of police and nearly three times the mayor’s paycheck. His total compensation, including pension and healthcare benefits, was $879,000.
>This is generally about 1.5 times their normal pay.
>Lieutenant Timothy Dolan, a 26-year veteran who leads the traffic unit and serves as vice president of the OPOA police union, was paid $493,247 in overtime in 2024. Combined with his salary and other pay, this netted him a $711,000 paycheck, making him OPD’s highest-paid employee
Well I'm just going to have to guess his OT is actually 2x and not 1.5x, as otherwise he's working more than 80 hours a week. Or maybe he's only expected to work something like 20 hours a week?
>On July 9, Dolan reported he worked 23 hours. The next day, he worked 16 hours, and for the following three days, he worked 15 hours each.
It just looks like the attorney general in this area has been asleep at the wheel.
>On July 9, Dolan reported he worked 23 hours. The next day, he worked 16 hours, and for the following three days, he worked 15 hours each
That sounds like one of the jobs I've had. One job was so bad that when they were designing their new offices, I asked if they could add a shower since I was pretty much living there. (Came back as a no because of insurance/liability costs.) The shit of it was that I was a salary employee so I never saw a dime of overtime. It did not take long for me to look for a new job. Worst experience ever for me.
Police overtime is quite complicated. Assuming 23 hours of work represent actually 23 hours of work will lead to confusion. Alot of these overtime jobs are where the government mandates that a police officer simply be on site. Regardless if they are sleeping or actually doing any police work.
California base overtime schedule is 1x for 8 hours in a day, 1.5x for the next 4 hours in a day, then 2x for any time after that. Additionally, any time above 40 hrs in a workweek or on a 7th day of consecutive work in a workweek gets 1.5x, and any time after 8 on that 7th day gets 2x.
Thus, it's possible to only get paid your base rate for 16 hours in a workweek, if you work more than 40 hours in the first 2 days of the week. For example, if I worked 24 hours on Monday, and 16 hours on Tuesday, I'd be making 1x * 8hrs on Monday + 1.5x*4hrs on Monday + 2x*12 hours on Monday, then 1x*8hrs on Tuesday + 1.5x*4hrs on Tuesday + 2x*4hrs on Tuesday. On every subsequent day of that week, my standard workday would be paid at 1.5x for the first 12 hours, then 2x for any time after that, until the seventh consecutive day, where I'd get 1.5x for 8hrs, then 2x after that.
All together, in California, if you work 24/7 for a week, you end up with
16hrs@1x + 64hrs@1.5x + 88hrs at 2x, netting out to an effective 188hrs per week.
IMO, this whole system is a little busted owing to the fixed workweek (it's not "any 7 day period", it's "over the course of a recurring 7 day schedule")
People pay taxes, so that is their money really. Of course it does matter. The system is broken when money is stolen from the public like in this case (most likely if found out to be true). That's a problem that is much bigger than merely one cop abusing the system. Several people must have benefitted here.
> […] even when department staffing increased, overtime continued to go up. From 2011 to 2024, staffing increased by nearly 9%. Over the same period, overtime went up by almost 200%.
The data in this article is good, but this piece is really weak. They should have just left this blurb out.
It implies that these two should be directly related without acknowledging any other contributing factors.
It’s implying “overtime is a function of staffing, staffing went up so overtime should go down”.
What if the population went up? What if there’s more work for 1 person to do for whatever reason, like some new process? What if crime rates changed? What if traffic beats were more demanding due to new roads or whatever?
The rest of the data in the article is more damning and directly correlated to the point they’re trying to make.
This specific data point just raises more questions than answers and feels like they’re trying to dogpile instead of being journalists, and it would have made their case stronger if they left it out, imo.
There is no police agency in the Bay Area more deserving of dissolution than the Oakland Police. Oakland should take a page from the playbook of Camden, New Jersey, and completely delete the department, creating a new one under different leadership and with none of the former staff. In Camden, cops who wanted to stay on had to apply and take a psychiatric evaluation, which I think is a great idea for Oakland. I doubt even a bare majority of the current cops would survive a competitive evaluation.
I know "defund the police" brings extreme ire from the neo-liberals to the conservatives in the US, but I don't know how you can look at this, and think anything else. These guys are decked out in fully blown war paraphernalia (despite roofers and garbage men being much more dangerous professions). They have drones, helicopters, humvees, all kinds of tactical war tech...
100% of that money should go toward investing in the community and it will provide better results, I'm sure it will lower crime too.
Has anyone ever called the police? I have, a couple of times. They did nothing and seemed to have sub-highschool education when I interacted with them.
I also knew police families growing up. Every single one of them was a raging racist. Something is dangerously wrong with policing in the US (we have the largest prison population in the world). Cutting their funding seems like a great step 1.
A non-extreme position is that we do need the police… but not like this. We need systemic reform from the ground up, but punitive measures wouldn’t do that.
People hate crime than they hate any of these faults of police.
With modern surveillance technology, you could probably get rid of a fair number of cops, but you’d still need some muscle to actually enforce the law. The other option is regulatory penalties, but those tend to work best on middle-class people, not on the classes that commit physical theft and violence, which people hate most of all.
The argument for defunding the police (that I agree with) is that crime goes down when you address the root cause: poverty. The money spent on policing could more effectively lower crime by being used for building healthier communities.
I just don't agree that poverty explains a lot of crime, particularly in developed nations. There's probably some explained by legitimate need, but a rational person would probably find welfare and other benefits easier to use and less risky. Some is due to "poverty", but really envy for luxuries that others have.
I think the largest part is either due to being caught up in a bad social set, or straight up because they think crime is fine. Poverty doesn't cause this, at least not primarily - it's rather that personal characteristics such as lack of impulse control and high time preference lead to both poverty and a propensity to crime.
Poverty absolutely causes crime. Much crime is committed by the homeless for instance. People growing up in poverty also have many situations that can cause them to develop mental health issues.
This is the system. I was a juror in a trial against Oakland where they were found to have been doing this - well over a decade ago. Oakland’s police department in particular has been in disarray for a very long time.
Employees in any profession are going to test boundaries and see what they can get away with. There was a similar report of a BART employee racking up incredible overtime as well.
This, and what it demands. Is the place understaffed? Last I checked, yes. Are the overtime hours unnecessary, or there literally aren’t any others staffed to cover them? I did a ride along with OPD, and they were severely understaffed and the number of active unit cars at any given time were insanely small for the size of the city, not to mention a city with such a high crime rate.
If there are abuses of the system, they should be prosecuted, absolutely. I’m not sure that’s the entire story here though
You'd think the USA would be very transparent about it here. After all cops are paid by the public. So when a city can not explain cops becoming millionaires, this is a much bigger problem than merely that individual cop getting rich. It also undermines a system since cops have certain privileges by default.
It's bad that cities and states can't get a firm grip on this kind of stuff.
But this is a transparency success story. The wages were reported on. The press published a story about it. They were able to get "overtime worked forms" records from OPD. In many other places (including may places in the US) you would never find out about this.
People who are payed by taxes should all be required to use time-tracking apps and justify their time. This is smells of abusing a broken system for personal gain.
This smells of a system working as designed. Cops exist to protect property, capital, and the status quo. The people whom they actually exist to serve have no issue using tax dollars for this purpose.
This is business as usual for public sector unions. Focusing on police unions is a good way to highlight these issues to leftists who reflexively both defend unions and criticize police
> Lieutenant Timothy Dolan, a 26-year veteran who leads the traffic unit and serves as vice president of the OPOA police union, was paid $493,247 in overtime in 2024
All that overtime with the traffic unit, and what to show for it? Anyone who lives in the Bay knows that cops have completely abdicated their mandate and responsibility for traffic enforcement. The roads truly feel like the Wild West, and those who "serve and protect" are laughing their way to the bank.
Why does a police department need an executive team, complete with corporate headshots? These officers need to be tried and convicted of fraud and whoever let this happen in the city needs to face charges for criminal conduct.
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[ 0.24 ms ] story [ 28.2 ms ] threadBut you are delusional if you think anybody as dumb as a US cop is giving up $100/hr for sitting at a desk pretending to do paperwork just because someone wants to take video of it and never review it.
Look, I get where you’re going, but if you think about what would _actually_ happen, it would definitely be much worse if they suddenly had to rehire the majority of the force.
Given the context (government), the taxpayers are probably footing the bill for expensive therapy sessions that go unattended.
sounds like $50 of work for Gemini could replace $490,000 of that officer's overtime.
Some quick googling seems to indicate that Oakland's population also increased nearly 15% in the same time frame. And then, of course, COVID wreaked havoc on everyone in the early 2020s. Crime rates went up, but police staffing remained the same, so more opportunities for overtime?
edit: actually, it looks like Oakland froze police staffing completely in the wake of the George Floyd event, and then cut the OPD budget by $15 million and also reduced sworn officer staffing from 780 to 730. Eliminated 50 police officer jobs.
He is also the head of the labor union…
>Lieutenant Timothy Dolan, a 26-year veteran who leads the traffic unit and serves as vice president of the OPOA police union, was paid $493,247 in overtime in 2024. Combined with his salary and other pay, this netted him a $711,000 paycheck, making him OPD’s highest-paid employee
Well I'm just going to have to guess his OT is actually 2x and not 1.5x, as otherwise he's working more than 80 hours a week. Or maybe he's only expected to work something like 20 hours a week?
>On July 9, Dolan reported he worked 23 hours. The next day, he worked 16 hours, and for the following three days, he worked 15 hours each.
It just looks like the attorney general in this area has been asleep at the wheel.
That sounds like one of the jobs I've had. One job was so bad that when they were designing their new offices, I asked if they could add a shower since I was pretty much living there. (Came back as a no because of insurance/liability costs.) The shit of it was that I was a salary employee so I never saw a dime of overtime. It did not take long for me to look for a new job. Worst experience ever for me.
Thus, it's possible to only get paid your base rate for 16 hours in a workweek, if you work more than 40 hours in the first 2 days of the week. For example, if I worked 24 hours on Monday, and 16 hours on Tuesday, I'd be making 1x * 8hrs on Monday + 1.5x*4hrs on Monday + 2x*12 hours on Monday, then 1x*8hrs on Tuesday + 1.5x*4hrs on Tuesday + 2x*4hrs on Tuesday. On every subsequent day of that week, my standard workday would be paid at 1.5x for the first 12 hours, then 2x for any time after that, until the seventh consecutive day, where I'd get 1.5x for 8hrs, then 2x after that.
All together, in California, if you work 24/7 for a week, you end up with
16hrs@1x + 64hrs@1.5x + 88hrs at 2x, netting out to an effective 188hrs per week.
IMO, this whole system is a little busted owing to the fixed workweek (it's not "any 7 day period", it's "over the course of a recurring 7 day schedule")
Civil cervants need more & better options to get a higher payment within their org structure, I say.
And it’s funny how fans of one hate the other and vice versa.
The data in this article is good, but this piece is really weak. They should have just left this blurb out.
It’s implying “overtime is a function of staffing, staffing went up so overtime should go down”.
What if the population went up? What if there’s more work for 1 person to do for whatever reason, like some new process? What if crime rates changed? What if traffic beats were more demanding due to new roads or whatever?
The rest of the data in the article is more damning and directly correlated to the point they’re trying to make.
This specific data point just raises more questions than answers and feels like they’re trying to dogpile instead of being journalists, and it would have made their case stronger if they left it out, imo.
100% of that money should go toward investing in the community and it will provide better results, I'm sure it will lower crime too.
Has anyone ever called the police? I have, a couple of times. They did nothing and seemed to have sub-highschool education when I interacted with them.
I also knew police families growing up. Every single one of them was a raging racist. Something is dangerously wrong with policing in the US (we have the largest prison population in the world). Cutting their funding seems like a great step 1.
With modern surveillance technology, you could probably get rid of a fair number of cops, but you’d still need some muscle to actually enforce the law. The other option is regulatory penalties, but those tend to work best on middle-class people, not on the classes that commit physical theft and violence, which people hate most of all.
I think the largest part is either due to being caught up in a bad social set, or straight up because they think crime is fine. Poverty doesn't cause this, at least not primarily - it's rather that personal characteristics such as lack of impulse control and high time preference lead to both poverty and a propensity to crime.
Employees in any profession are going to test boundaries and see what they can get away with. There was a similar report of a BART employee racking up incredible overtime as well.
It’s ultimately whatever the system permits.
If there are abuses of the system, they should be prosecuted, absolutely. I’m not sure that’s the entire story here though
But this is a transparency success story. The wages were reported on. The press published a story about it. They were able to get "overtime worked forms" records from OPD. In many other places (including may places in the US) you would never find out about this.
All that overtime with the traffic unit, and what to show for it? Anyone who lives in the Bay knows that cops have completely abdicated their mandate and responsibility for traffic enforcement. The roads truly feel like the Wild West, and those who "serve and protect" are laughing their way to the bank.