BOSTON POLICE OVERTIME SPENDING
New recruit class coming in April amid call for more cops
Police overtime rose back up last year to an all-time record even as payroll for the department dropped, according to new data released by the city.
Police overtime hit $78.3 million in 2022, even above the previous department record of $78.1 million in 2020, a year of pandemic and protest when the city began to make moves to decrease OT.
This comes as the overall police payroll shrinks, last year dropping to $405.8 million from a high of $416 million in 2020 and $408 million in 2021.
This means police OT, which activists have targeted for years as a place to make cuts in favor of other social programs, makes up a larger percentage of the police budget than ever, now at over 19%.
Police overtime is only budgeted for $44 million during this fiscal year, which accounts for the last six months of 2022 and first six of 2023.
The Boston Police Department says a main driver of this increased overtime spending is the fact that a lot of events that were off the table for a couple of years there during the pandemic fully returned last year.
A department spokesman said BPD is aiming to have a doubly large recruit class in April, with more than 200 potential future cops. The department also noted its cadet classes aimed at recruiting Boston residents and said it’s “aggressively” trying to work through the list of officers on long-term medical leave, either getting them back to active duty or retired.
The Boston Police Patrolmen’s
Association, the largest cop union in the city, reiterated its common contention that much of the overtime is forced by the department and could be solved by hiring more cops.
“When you’re short 400 police officers and operating at less than optimal staffing levels, you’re going to incur overtime,” BPPA President Larry Calderone said. “None of our officers are happy working double and triple shifts. But, if you want to address the issue, the fix is in the hiring process and hiring more cops.”
Longtime police-reform activist Jamarhl Crawford didn’t necessarily disagree with that, acknowledging that the city’s having a hard time attracting and retaining
cops, stressing staffing levels.
But as for the OT system as it exists in the police union contracts, “This is the goose that lays golden eggs,” he said, adding it’s not going to change by itself.
“At the end of the day this is really abuse of tax money for things that it could be better used for,” he said.
Police overtime became a flashpoint in mid 2020, during the budget cycle for fiscal year 2021, which began that July amid the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests over racial issues that followed the death of George Floyd, a Black man murdered by police in Minnesota.
Then, as chants of “defund the police” filled the streets, a cadre of city councilors, including nowMayor Michelle Wu and now-Attorney General Andrea Campbell, called to slash the entire police budget by 10% and use that money elsewhere.
Ultimately, then-Mayor Marty Walsh, pulling out all the stops, was able to get a compromise budget passed that included a $12 million cut in police overtime from $60 million to $48 million.
But the OT budget is a tricky thing. The city’s allowed to overshoot it without a problem, given some of the obvious negative consequences that could result in getting through much of the year and then being unable to pay police overtime to cover shifts or deal with emergent situations.
So practically, as many have noted over the years, cutting the OT budget does little aside from set a posture. Wu did say she intended to “rein in overtime” through efficiency improvements to the department.
But the issue was back again during last year’s budget cycle, when Boston city councilors looked to exercise their new power to amend the budget to cut $13 million from the police department, largely from the overtime budget. Wu, now as mayor, vetoed that, calling it a “false reduction” in light of the aforementioned allowed overruns.
City officials declined to talk about what’s on deck for this year’s budget cycle. The mayor’s first crack at the budget is due in midApril, to be passed in a final form by July 1.
These numbers are part of the ever-growing city payroll, which totaled $1.93 billion last year, up from $1.87 billion in 2021 and $1.82 billion in 2020. The total city budget is $4 billion for this fiscal year, though the fiscal year and calendar year are offset by six months.
For police, detail pay — which is generally supposed to be recouped by the city from whatever company’s doing the work that needs a cop there to direct traffic — has remained about