Supes challenge SFPD on overtime spending—and rent-a-cop program

The San Francisco Police Department budget has gone from $650 million two years ago to $850 million—and yet, the department has just gone back to the supes to ask for more money to cover this year’s extra overtime expenses.

And while Mayor Daniel Lurie has said he wants to fully fund SFPD, the supes—even the most conservative ones—are showing a bit of pushback.

At a hearing on an SFPD budget audit Wednesday, several supes questioned why overtime is so out of control. Sup. Shamann Walton said that he’s been on the board for more than six years, and every single year, the supes approve the police budget—and every single year, the cops come back in the middle of the year and ask for more money for overtime.

Last year, the department spent $108 million on overtime. “There’s a troubling pattern of potential abuse,” Walton said.

In fact, a small number of cops get a huge percentage of the overtime. Nicolas Menard, a principal with the Budget and Legislative Analyst’s Office, told the Budget and Appropriations Committee that overtime has tripled in the past five years, and that some officers were working more than 2,000 hours of overtime in a year. That’s the equivalent of holding another full-time job.

Walton and Sup. Jackie Fielder raised an issue that’s not often discussed in the police budget process: the so-called 10B program, that allows officers to work on their own time for private companies, which pay the cops overtime wages. According to Menard, when an officer takes a 10B assignment, working a shift as a private security officer for, say, Apple or a local bank (in uniform, and with full arrest powers), that could mean the department has to backfill that shift with another officer, who makes overtime.

In fact, the Budget and Legislative Analyst found examples where officers were calling in sick and then taking private 10B gigs.

“No officer should call in sick and then go to another assignment,” Walton said.

In fact, under city rules, officers who take more than a normal number of sick days aren’t eligible to accept 10B assignments—but in the past five years, the department has approved more than 50,000 hours of private gigs for officers who were ineligible.

Assistant Chief David Lazar defended the program, saying that it allows the city to put more cops on the street without the money coming from the General Fund. But those cops aren’t actually on the streets patrolling; they are stationed at a private business, generally to prevent theft.

He said that officers can’t work a 10B shift if they have called in sick—except that in some cases, they can. He said, for example, an officer who called to say they can’t come to work because of a sick child might be able to work a 10B shift later that day when a spouse came home to take over those duties.

It’s hard to believe that would account for 50,000 hours.

The Memorandum of Understanding between the Police Officers Association and the city states clearly that officers who take more than a modest amount of sick time can’t work those lucrative private gigs. But Lazar said the department has approved them anyway, because of a desperate shortage of staff.

Fielder asked why, when the department says it doesn’t have enough officers to patrol neighborhoods, it’s allowing cops to take these private jobs. “When every dollar matters, we can’t afford this,” she said.

Lazar said that the officers who take 10B jobs wouldn’t be on the streets anyway; they would be at home. But then, of course, they are working overtime—just not for the city.

“This creates a chain reaction, and costly overtime,” Fielder said. “Why do we have a 10B program when we are so shorthanded? That’s conflation of private interests over the public interest.”

It’s a good question.

The 10B program was initially designed to make sure that private entities like big conventions and sporting events pay their own way for the cops they need. But it’s become much, much larger: There are rented SFPD officers in high-end retail outlets all over San Francisco.

Lazar essentially admitted that the department isn’t following the MOU, but said that the POA was fine with that. Fielder questioned why the city can’t do anything about a clear violation of policy unless the police union (whose members benefit from this) signed off. “Are there no consequences when an MOU is violated?” she asked.

Again, it’s a good question.

Dozens of people representing community-based organizations that are facing massive budget cuts, threatening crucial services, spoke at public comment, pointing out that a few million dollars would make a huge difference to them. A few million dollars seems like pocket change not worth monitoring for the cops.

Sup. Matt Dorsey used to work for SFPD, and is one of the department’s strongest supporters. Sup. Joel Engardio is also a big fan. But both of them raised questions about the overtime problem and an apparent lack of accountability. Dorsey said “we need to fix this,” and said that the lack of fiscal responsibility was undermining public faith in the Police Department.

That suggests that there may be a bit more scrutiny of the police budget this year, and that the committee may not just rubber stamp everything the cops ask for.

In fact, the panel did vote to send a measure allocating additional overtime funding to the full board—but without recommendation.