LAPD officers owed $47.3 million in overtime pay
LOS ANGELES, CA Sept 1, 2021– The Los Angeles City Council defunded their police department by $150 million last year. Now, they’ve racked up $47 million just in overtime costs since that time.
The union warned the City that the department would be faced with millions in overtime costs should they decrease funding and lessen the amount of officers on the department, which dropped below 10,000 officers with the changes.
Those warnings have become a reality.
The LA Times reported that LAPD officers worked over 680,000 overtime hours that they hadn’t yet been paid for during the budget year ending June 30. This is what LAPD calls “overtime banking.”
Together, those hours value $47.3 million.
To be clear, that’s already a third of the budget cuts made, with no plans on how to pay it.
Police union Los Angeles Police Protective League spokesman Dustin DeRollo said that tax payers would end up paying more for those overtime hours when they’re finally paid out. “There’s an increased cost to taxpayers, because they’ll be paying out those overtime hours at a higher rate later on,” he said.
This is because overtime must be paid at an officer’s current salary once paid, to include any pay increases or promotions.
With the last year’s worth of overtime at over $47 million, the total in LAPD’s overtime bank is now $154 million.
