The SFPD overtime gravy train will continue running, as on Tuesday, the SF Board of Supervisors very begrudgingly appropriated another $91 million in overtime for both the police and sheriff’s departments, after years of similar massive overtime requests.
It’s been a running local story/joke for years in San Francisco that the SF Police Department asks for tens of millions of dollars in overtime pay that is well beyond what they had budgeted for. And they end up getting it despite the SF Board of Supervisors’ objections, as the supes approve this overtime year after year despite their own complaints. A new report from 48 Hills points out that police have been asking for this extra, over-budget overtime for at least the last seven years in a row.
And it sure seems to deserve more scrutiny, as a December 2024 audit of the department’s overtime found that many SFPD officers would call in sick, but then work as private security on the very same day that they’d called in sick. That same audit also found that only 12% of SFPD officers were responsible for one-third of all the department’s overtime pay. So surely there has to be some way to tighten the screws around that…