Audit shows SDPD spent $50M on overtime last year; limits now considered
SAN DIEGO (FOX 5/KUSI) — A City of San Diego audit looked into the San Diego Police Department’s use of overtime hours.
The city has spent over budget on police overtime for 10 out of the last 11 fiscal years. Last year, the city said it spent more than $50 million on police overtime.
“The San Diego Police Department faces tension between the cost of overtime and the struggle to hire and retain more officers, so overtime is not as necessary,” the audit reads.
During Fiscal Year 2023, SDPD had only filed 2,326 positions, but was budgeted for 2,664.
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The audit, released Feb 28, had three major findings:
To ensure officers are available to respond to the public, SDPD does not limit overtime, risking fatigued officers.
While SDPD overtime spending is in line with other police departments, more civilian positions could help reduce overtime costs and improve response times.
Overall, SDPD overtime tracking and authorization is accurate.
The audit said SDPD encourages officers to take an 8-hour break between shifts, but it is an informal policy and not enforced. The audit said it was rare, but they did find officers who worked 16 hours or longer days with fewer than 8 hours off between their shifts for multiple days in a row.
The audit found most officers do not work “excessive overtime,” but they found 50 officers each worked more than 1,000 hours of overtime last year. And a few officers worked more than 2,000 hours of overtime, averaging nearly 90 hours of work a week in fiscal year 2023.
FOX 5 asked Jared Wilson with the San Diego Police Officer’s Association to express his thoughts on the findings.
“The police department is using overtime in a responsible way. but our staffing crisis is at its peak. So we really need people to sign up to become police officers, we need people to recognize this overtime is necessary,” Wilson said.
The department does not mandate overtime. Wilson said officers volunteer for the overtime shifts, but still some go unfilled. He said the audit shows the dire need for more officers.
“We need to fill those gaps. We need people to sign up for this job, but they also need to be fairly compensated,” Wilson said. “We have a staffing issue and a staffing crisis on the SDPD and in public safety in the city of SD. We are down over 300 officers from 2009 levels. While the city has grown, policing has gotten more complicated and our response times to 911 calls continues to go up.”
SDPD’s overtime spending was below the average compared to other large cities in California. According to the audit, SDPD’s overtime spending accounted for about 6% of its overall budget. Meanwhile, cities like Los Angeles and Anaheim, to name a few, were higher than SDPD’s overtime spending.
The audit shows that SDPD does not mandate an 8-hour break for officers between shifts, which the audit said can be dangerous. Additionally, Wilson said this can result in more burnout.
The audit showed typically officers work an average of 3.5 overtime hours a week, but some officers had clocked up to 2,000 overtime hours last year.
Wilson said this is fixable — more officers and better pay.
“I’ve had to work 18 or 19 hour days in critical incidents,” Wilson said. “I can tell you I’ve gone home at the end of those days and I am just wiped out. You’re mentally exhausted, you’re physically exhausted.”
As part of the audit, the city gave four recommendations to SDPD moving forward.
SDPD should require that officers take an 8-hour break between shifts.
SDPD should prioritize its overtime allocation and determine if they should set a limit on the maximum number of overtime an officer can work in a day or week.
Once work hour limits are set, it recommends enabling notifications to not go over the set limits.
Analyze how many Police Investigative Service Officers, or similar civilian positions, need to maximize resources.
According to the audit, SDPD agreed to all four of the recommendations. Chief David Nisleit responded to our request for comment and said he will stand by the SDPOA’s response.
The full report can be found here.
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