Boston police overtime is like kudzu — despite numerous attempts by city councilors to cut it, it always grows back.
Its growth proceeds apace even in the midst of a pending fiscal crisis that has sent Mayor Michelle Wu to Beacon Hill to plead for more taxing authority.
It grows because, as a report by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts put it, rather prophetically several years ago, “the BPD has no guardrails stopping it from grossly overspending.”
The 2023 payroll figures released by the city — figures that showed nearly 100 officers making more than $100,000 that year in overtime alone — also show the city spent some $88.5 million on police overtime. That’s more than 20 percent of its overall budget of more than $400 million.
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It’s also more than double the $44 million actually budgeted by the city for overtime that year.
It’s true that gun violence from nonfatal shootings and homicides is way down. And that’s great news. But it’s also true that overtime is often accrued not necessarily by beat cops patrolling the streets but rather is baked in to the myriad perks mandated by police union contracts, including the most recent one signed by Wu last December with the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and in March with the detectives union.
Top earners included Lieutenant Stanley Demesmin ($221,579 in overtime, total take-home $426,425), Lieutenant Sean Smith ($152,031 in OT, total take-home $402,215) and Captain John Danilecki ($96,955 in OT, total take-home $385,879), the latter the subject of a number of citizen complaints.
Wu did get some valuable policy concessions in those contracts signed last December with the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association and in March with the detectives union. One of those concessions will make it easier to rid the department of officers charged with certain serious crimes without going through arbitration.
But the changes with respect to overtime are marginal, even as the cost to city taxpayers keeps rising. (The police budget for Boston’s current fiscal year is $474.3 million, up some $70 million over last year.)
For example, court overtime is still mandated in both contracts at a minimum of four hours — no matter if an officer’s actual appearance is measured in minutes. The one concession, and it’s only in the detectives contract, is that an officer has to be notified of a cancellation 24 hours prior to a scheduled appearance rather than the previous 72 hours in advance. Court overtime alone amounted to $8 million for the entire department in fiscal 2022.
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Wu conceded in an interview with the Globe that “each side had issues that they hoped to incorporate in the contract that didn’t make it in.”
She also noted that efforts to have a visible police presence to deal with the homeless population and drug dealing at the Mass. and Cass intersection also added to police overtime — along with the usual spate of civic celebrations and political demonstrations.
BPPA President Larry Calderone blamed a shortage of officers for the high overtime bill — and it’s true, according to a department spokesperson, that the department had some 259 vacancies in 2023.
“We’re all being ordered to work a tremendous amount of overtime, so when you’re being forced to work, you have to be paid for it,” Calderone said. “If we stop having celebrations, and we stop doing public demonstrations, and we stop providing public safety, then we could probably cut down on the overtime budget. But short of that, I don’t see how the overtime budget goes down.”
Well, there are, of course, such routine chores as the weekday “purging” of the department’s evidence warehouse and monthly collection of old prescription drugs from each precinct around the city on a Saturday — chores that while predictable have for some inexplicable reason always been done on overtime. The system isn’t only costly, but that overtime perk opened the door to corruption.
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A federal investigation resulted in 15 officers being charged with overtime fraud; the most recent now-former officer was sentenced earlier this month.
Calderone is right about a shortage of officers contributing to the overtime problem. Last year the department put out a call to existing police officers in other communities looking for lateral transfers and offering at least temporary exemptions to the city’s residency requirements.
There is also the obvious answer to getting more officers on the streets and that’s to get them out from behind desks — and allowing civilians to perform more of those non-policing chores. Again, an unfinished bit of business from contract negotiations.
Wu went to Beacon Hill this week because commercial tax values in Boston are down, and she fears a “devastating” hike in the residential property tax rate of as much as 33 percent as a result. “That’s the number that keeps me up at night,” she testified.
Her preferred solution is to just raise taxes on businesses even more, a step that would require the Legislature’s permission. But another way to avert big tax hikes on homeowners is to control spending. She should be taking a hard look at the proposed 8 percent increase in the city’s budget — and the costs like police overtime that have been rising without an end in sight.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.
