Ending the culture of police overtime abuse

Hey, everybody does it, so it must be OK.

That was basically the defense offered by three former members and one current officer in the Boston Police Department recently acquitted of overtime fraud charges in federal court.

The four were part of a group of 15 BPD members charged with running an overtime scam involving the department’s evidence warehouse that cost taxpayers more than $250,000 in overtime pay for hours not actually worked, according to the original indictment handed down in 2020.

Assignments for the Evidence Control Unit included regular “purge” overtime, aimed at reducing the warehouse inventory, that was supposed to be performed from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays. And one Saturday each month two officers were assigned to collect evidence such as unused prescription drugs from police “kiosks” throughout the city and bring it to an incinerator in Saugus. That OT assignment ran from 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. According to prosecutors, often the job was completed by 10 a.m. but time slips were submitted for the full eight hour-plus shift.

With a wink and a nod the deed was done.

“Not a superintendent, not a deputy superintendent and certainly not the commissioner ever told them there was anything inappropriate or incorrect about those practices,” Robert Goldstein, attorney for former police lieutenant Timothy Torigian, argued in his opening statement. “In practice it was a time-honored tradition that officers could, would, and did submit overtime” in four- or eight-hour blocks.

It wasn’t a conspiracy, attorney John Amabile, attorney for Henry Doherty, argued to the jury, it was “the culture.”

And it’s that culture that cries out for change — presumably the kind of change that a new commissioner, a new mayor, and a City Council bent on curbing unwarranted overtime should be setting their sights on.

Nine other current and former officers have already pleaded guilty and former Boston police captain Richard Evans, who oversaw the Evidence Control Unit during the years in question, is still awaiting trial. Evans

is charged with collecting $12,395 in overtime for hours he didn’t work and also for endorsing “the fraudulent overtime slips of his subordinates.”

Since then, operating procedures for the evidence unit have been “rewritten,” according to a spokeswoman for Police Commissioner Michael Cox. Kiosk assignments have been incorporated into regular work hours. However, “due to staffing levels” and the need to continually free up space in the evidence warehouse, the job of “purging” that warehouse still typically requires weekly overtime, the spokeswoman said.

Overtime scandals are nothing new at the BPD. Back in 2012, 10 officers in the drug unit were disciplined by the department for collecting undeserved overtime pay. Those instances involved overtime for court appearances, which under the BPD’s union contracts is indeed billed for a minimum of four hours.

The problem in this case involved officers who didn’t necessarily have to be in court — whose presence, in fact, had not been requested by the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.

But such was the culture at the overtime buffet. More recently, City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo raised questions about officers who collected court overtime but appeared to be issuing citations, making arrests, and filing field intelligence observations during the time they claimed to be in court. The allegations raised two years ago, in a story first reported by The Bay State Banner, are still under investigation by the BPD’s Bureau of Professional Standards, a police spokesman confirmed.

“The [overtime] system is very broken,” Arroyo told the Globe editorial board. “It’s just one hot mess.”

Court overtime — which is a $7 million to $10 million item annually — is largely a paper-based system, Arroyo noted, that remains “unreliable.” An electronic system where officers could sign in and out with their badge would certain help, he added. So too would a system similar to that used by the Lawrence Police Department where officers are put “on call” for possible court appearances but not paid until actually needed in the courtroom.

“The contract negotiations with all City of Boston police unions are focused on controlling routine overtime abuse and misuse in a variety of settings,” Mayor Michelle Wu said in a prepared statement.

And that’s truly where a change in the culture — and better management practices — begins. After all, the city’s police overtime budget is high enough — routinely exceeding $70 million a year despite usually being budgeted at around $45 million a year.

Repeated efforts by several mayoral administrations to somehow bring overtime costs under control have repeatedly failed to make a dent. Sure, no police department can anticipate a summer of marches and protests. But at a bare minimum, the department should be able to ensure hours paid correlate to hours actually worked. A well-managed department, not hamstrung by decades-old work rules, can bring some order to a chaotic system that too often has led to corrupt practices.

A police department that winks at corruption and rewards inefficiency is not simply expensive — it’s unworthy of this city.

A well-managed department, not hamstrung by decades-old work rules, can bring some order to a chaotic system that too often has led to corrupt practices.