OVERTIME PAYS FOR COP SHORTAGE
Top cop pulled in $38,000 extra in six months
DANBURY — Some police officers in the city are racking up nearly 50 percent of their salary in overtime pay as the department struggles to hire enough officers.
The top earning patrolman has already made more than $38,000 in overtime in the first six months of the year — that’s on top of his annual $79,823 salary.
And while the extra income might be welcome for some, many cops are routinely ordered to work multiple 16-hour shifts, particularly on the weekends, when there aren’t enough officers available.
“Of course we aren’t opposed to overtime, it’s a way to make more money, but it’s getting to the point where many of the officers are getting worn down,” said Bryan Reed, president of the local police union. “There are guys who are getting ordered to do 16-hour shifts every weekend.”
A review of top police salaries for the first six months of the year shows that 10 Danbury Police Department officers account for more than $170,000 in overtime.
After the chief, who earns $137,000 a year, the next top earning official in the department is Capt. Mitchell Weston, who has so far collected $19,000 in overtime in addition to a base salary of $110,000 a year.
Two police officers also made the list, with Officer Charles Eimicke earning $38,000 and Officer Anthony Maher earning nearly $34,000 in overtime on top of their annual $79,823 salaries.
Those who round out the top five are Deputy Chief Shaun McColgan, who earns $124,000 annually and Lt. Bryan Bishop, who has a base salary of $101,000 and has picked up nearly $12,000 in overtime.
While the department has a maximum allowed strength of 154 officers, Reed and others can’t remember a time in the past decade when the department had a full complement of officers.
Police Chief Patrick Ridenhour said the department now has 132 officers who are available for road duty, and another eight in the wings who recently graduated from the police academy. Those officers are still training and likely won’t hit the streets for another few months.
“The point is that we do have more officers on the streets — and that was a priority for me and the community ...” Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton
“We are really attacking this from all sides because we realize that the overtime is getting cumbersome for the officers,” Ridenhour said. “Of course some officers like the overtime, but many just want to go home and be with their families.”
Monroe Police Chief John Salvatore said while his department is much smaller, he tries to stay as close to the maximum 43 officers the department is budgeted for.
“Right now we have everything full,” said Salvatore, the immediate past president of the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association. “That doesn’t mean we don’t have some people out on training or on injury leave, but we try to keep the ranks as full as possible. If you go too long being short on officers, it’s going to drive up your overtime costs.”
Danbury budgets about $12 million annually for police salaries and about $2 million for overtime.
Unlike some cities, overtime pay is not calculated toward an officer’s pension.
Mayor Mark Boughton pledged to reduce overtime costs and put more police officers on the road when the department moved to a civilian dispatch center three years ago. But overtime costs have remained stagnant.
Boughton said this week that overtime costs haven’t gone down, in part, because
the minimum required manpower per shift also has increased.
“The point is that we do have more officers on the streets — and that was a priority for me and the community — but with only 132 officers ready for duty the department has to order people in,” he said. “We’ve never had a full contingent of officers. It’s a floating number that is impacted by retirements, on the job injuries and the time it takes to train a new officer before they are available for duty.”
Monroe’s Salvatore noted it could take nearly a year before a new hire is ready for road duty at his department, and the municipality is paying them during the time they train.
“It takes months if not years to fill up a slot while the officer is being trained, and we really aren’t getting anything for that money,”
he said.
While the Danbury department does have more officers that are available for road duty since dispatching was handed over to civilians, the number of calls have also increased, said Reed, the union president.
“Part of the reason for the increase in call volume is that civilians can’t triage the calls,” he said. “When an officer is handling dispatch they can weed out the calls that aren’t police matters,
but with a civilian dispatch that doesn’t happen.”
An example, he said, is someone who calls because a neighbor’s tree fell on their property. Because it’s a civil matter, police have no authority in such cases.
While there are some officers who volunteer for the overtime, its weighing heavily on officers who are ordered to work an extra shift, Reed said. On any given weekend, four to five officers are typically or-
dered to work an additional eight-hour shift because the manpower isn’t there.
“We have guys who are doing three 16-hour shifts a weekend,” he said. “It’s really grinding them down and it’s usually the junior guys who get the order. It could become a real issue if you have someone who is lacking sleep or attention responding to a serious call.”
Ridenhour said he is hoping to send several new recruits to the police academy in December, but it takes nearly a year before a new recruit is ready to hit the streets. The chief said they are also looking at hiring several officers from other area departments.
“Our hope is that by this time next year, if not sooner, we’ll have around 150 officers on the force,” he said. “We’re moving in the right direction.”