$6 Million in Overtime Pay For Policing Protests

in #politics4 years ago


The police around the country have been operating with generous budgets for years.

When they didn't have enough money, we have seen them engage in arguably unconstitutional practices that helped to flood those police funds with assets that came mostly from innocent individuals who had never been charged with a crime or convicted of any wrongdoing, but had their boat, car, money, house etc, stolen regardless.

They have earned many billions by doing this.

A great deal of funds are spent on overtime pay for officers.

And because of recent protests around the country, that has meant more overtime pay for agents. In Boston alone, it's estimated that they spent some $6 million in just overtime pay alone following the protests over Floyd's death.

Previous investigations have discovered that poor oversight might be responsible for fueling huge misspending for agencies around the country.

In Oakland, one audit found that cops allegedly gamed the system to run up $30 million in overtime pay. That audit suggested that because there was a lack of oversight and record-keeping for special event planning etc, they weren't able to determine whether or not officers might be using their position to cash in on it.

For a little more than 200 officers, it cost more than $30 million in overtime pay, and that's just in one year which put them generously over their budget.

In more than 80 percent of cases the audit found that they were lacking documentation to provide enough details about that overtime that was being worked and they didn't sound too pleased with the payroll systems and scheduling, how it was all working together. Money management isn't their strong suit and that is clear.

How much must the people pay? And does quality of service matter?

One law enforcement officer allegedly received almost $2.5 million in 5 years from overtime pay. If they are spending tens of millions over budget for paying out overtime, then perhaps they need to hire more officers and pay them a lower wage than the overtime premium that so many continue building-up.

If there were more competition in the security market then the result would be that we wouldn't see it costing so much. If they had to manage their funds or fail, then maybe they would hire someone for payroll and scheduling who knew how to do the job, how to balance a budget and structure things so that they didn't run several million over?

There are clear money problems, especially when you need to go looking to arguably steal from so many innocent Americans in order to get more.

State police ran up almost $60 million in overtime pay for 2019 alone.

The issue with so much overtime pay going out signals a clearly obvious hiring problem.

Given the alleged lack of transparency in some cases for that overtime pay, there could be potential corruption involved as well.

With the current reputation of this occupation in general seeming to further erode day-by-day, the more they spray tear gas and rubber bullets at nonviolent individuals for example, while 'just doing their job', that issue probably won't get any easier for them to fill that role.

Agents around the country need to start treating their communities as a customer to be served rather than a group of potential threats to be ruled over, harassed over things like lemonade stands and a few plants growing in the garden.

Pics:
pixabay
giphy