An audit of San Francisco police overtime spending found repeated violations of limits set by department policy and the law, costing the city tens of millions of dollars.
Overtime has quadrupled from about $19.2 million in fiscal 2018-19 to about $80.1 million in fiscal 2022-23.
The audit also questioned the effectiveness of extra deployments in the Tenderloin and Union Square, saying they hadn’t proven effective in reducing crime or 911 response times. It recommended that police come up with methods for evaluating the strategy, which it currently doesn’t have.
The review by the city’s Budget and Legislative Analyst covered five years between the fiscal year that started in 2018 and the one that ended in 2023. The Board of Supervisors asked for the audit in June 2023.
The report found weekly and yearly limits set by law and department policy were routinely exceeded without consequence, breakdowns occurred in the approval process for overtime requests, and there was a cycle of officers taking sick days on a consistent basis that caused other officers to cover their shifts by working overtime.
It also found that some officers who took excessive sick leave still worked overtime assignments for private and special events, known as 10B shifts.
Auditors faulted a small group of officers for a disproportionate amount of overtime, writing, “12 percent of sworn staff who worked overtime accounted for 32 percent of SFPD’s total overtime hours. We also identified high users of overtime who consistently work the equivalent of 80-hour work weeks every week of the year, in some cases for multiple years in a row.”
The audit said officers routinely took sick days on the first or last day of their work week or called out of weekend shifts, requiring other officers to work overtime and contributing to “backfill,” or filling out a schedule with a short staff.
Overall, we found a lack of both internal and external accountability for overtime limit violations and excessive overtime at SFPD. The Department has not taken sufficient steps to enforce its overtime limits, and violations typically do not result in consequences or corrective action.
San Francisco Budget and Legislative Analyst
Sick and injury leave increased 77% during the five-year period, with the average officer taking more than 25 days off in fiscal 2022-23. The backfill problem was made worse by a policy that allows officers to swap overtime pay for extra paid time off.
The report also said officers who took excessive sick time, which it defined as more than 20 hours per week, were still working overtime for private events through the city’s fund that provides for that — despite restrictions in the city’s memorandum of understanding with the department that restricts their eligibility.
There are various limits on how many hours of overtime an officer can make that are paid by the city, including an overall annual limit of 520 hours. But officers can make more if they work private events that are reimbursed by event holders. The report said 51,000 hours of 10B shifts went to ineligible officers with high sick leave rates.
The auditors recommended enacting better controls to monitor potential abuse of sick leave and restricting those who took excessive time off from working 10B shifts.
The audit noted that the issues have been exacerbated by staffing shortages at the police department that have persisted since 2020. The department was about 12% short of its target of roughly 2,189 sworn officers as of this month, according to Police Chief William Scott.
“Overall, we found a lack of both internal and external accountability for overtime limit violations and excessive overtime at SFPD,” auditors wrote. “The Department has not taken sufficient steps to enforce its overtime limits, and violations typically do not result in consequences or corrective action.”
‘It was bad, but not this bad’
Supervisor Dean Preston requested the audit as the chair of the Government Audit and Oversight Committee after he said the police department overspent its 2023 overtime budget by over $55 million. Preston lost his bid for reelection.
“I knew it was bad, but not this bad,” Preston said in a press release. “The violation of laws and contracts, the lack of oversight, and the abuse of overtime are alarming and require immediate intervention and oversight.”
Scott wrote in a letter to auditors that the police department only disagreed with three of the report’s 30 recommendations.
He attributed the overtime increases to staffing shortages and said that the department had already made some changes to address the problems identified, including creating an Overtime Compliance Unit and a way to identify stations that are at their overtime limit or are not following overtime policies.
“As noted in the audit, the increase in the use of overtime in the SFPD is directly tied to the current understaffing of the Department, which at last count was noted at a shortfall of at least 274 officers,” he wrote to the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office.
“Prior to 2020, SFPD had not required officers to backfill shifts on overtime when other members were absent because the Department had enough personnel to cover the work using on duty personnel. As staffing levels have dropped, overtime has increased at an inversely proportional rate,” he wrote.
The recommendations the department disagreed with included one urging it to make anyone who used more than 40 hours of sick time within the last six months ineligible for an extra time-off bonus called a “fitness award.” Another recommendation called for giving the department more flexibility to adjust scheduled hours without paying overtime, and incorporating more overtime data into its biannual report to the Board of Supervisors.
Some of the audit’s other recommendations were creating biweekly reports on overtime usage within the department, having consequences for administrative breakdowns and enforcing existing sick leave policies.
Others centered around conducting more internal audits, further restricting holiday and other pay bonuses based on callout metrics and creating more detailed staffing plans.
Auditors said that the problem posed safety concerns for officers and the public because of the impact of working excessive overtime.
“Excessive overtime hours pose risks to public safety and officer health, may contribute to employee burnout and negatively affect morale, and may generate unnecessary financial costs for the City,” the report said.
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