First from Los Angeles:
NEW: LAPD officers racked up $40 million in overtime during the recent protests, but won’t be paid for it, and will instead be given comp time, according to a memo sent out by Chief Moore I obtained. Budget is out of cash. LAPD sources tell me morale is at “rock bottom”. @FOXLA pic.twitter.com/Hs4iZSofaE
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) June 16, 2020
As reported by CNN:
Protests in Los Angeles, first over stay at home orders and then the death of George Floyd, have resulted in large amounts of overtime work for officers of the Los Angeles Police Department, but they will not be paid for the time, according to an internal memo.
The department will compensate the officers in time off instead, LAPD told CNN.
“During this extraordinary time, including the full mobilization of our sworn members, the Department has expended more than $40 million dollars in overtime expenses,” the memo reads. “This amount far exceeds any budgetary reserve to address unusual occurrences.”
This announcement comes nearly two weeks after Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced the city identified $100 million to $150 million in cuts to LAPD’s budget to “build trust and bolster accountability” with more transparent police practices.
The Mayor of LA acquiesced to the whims of the protestors and defunded the police. Now police who worked a shit load of overtime during the lockdown and recent riots are not getting paid overtime. They will be compensated with additional time off.
Morale is low and reports are many officers are looking to quit.
Second from Hallandale, Florida:
Hallandale Beach SWAT resigns not over chief taking a knee, but lack of support, they say
10 members of Hallandale Beach’s SWAT Team resigned Friday in a lengthy memo to HBPD Chief Sonia Quiñones.
While they cited many issues for their resignations, the last straw was when members of the Command Staff took a knee in solidarity, they said, not because of the gesture but because of whom the SWAT team believed they were supporting and what was the reason for the display.
“Lastly and most shockingly,” they said, “having members of the Command Staff taking a knee in solidarity with Vice Mayor Sabrina Javellana (who stated she wants the officers ‘fired and charged’) and a handful of political activists that chanted, “Howard Bowe, re-open the case…” showed a lack of support,” they stated.
Bowe was shot and killed during a drug raid. The officers were not indicted by a grand jury and the city settled with the family. The Vice Mayor wants to reopen the Bowe case in the current anti-police zeitgeist.
I saw the video and I was floored:
After some tech difficulties, here is the video of our interview. https://t.co/ntGq0uMWQu Howard Bowe will not be forgotten by the people of Hallandale Beach and now all of you who have learned of his life and story in the past week. https://t.co/L7k3jxMWQ6
— Sabrina Javellana (@jvellana) June 15, 2020
If you were shocked that the Vice Mayor looks and sounds like a stupid millennial, it’s because she is. She’s 22 and was elected while a college student.
Hallandale literally elected a shitty campus activist to be Number Two of their city and are reaping the whirlwind for it.
On both coasts, local governments have been caught up in the anti-cop social movement and are screwing over their police departments, and now officers are quitting or cutting back.
The results will be disastrous. Brace for the coming shit storm.
They’ll get their overtime money eventually. The union will sue, they will win, and after enough time, all the officers who worked will receive their pay. The city will be forced to come up with the money somehow. You can’t make people work and not pay them, especially in the public sector.
Damned WuFlu! Who know that overtime weary officers are particularly susceptible?
One of the problems with comp time is that you have to ask permission to take it. Somehow, with cops stretched thin, you’ll never get permission to take the time off. Another issue is that you can’t buy groceries (or anything else) with comp time. I know a lot of guys rely on the OT to make ends meet.
“Nuke Road Warrior” is right. The “comp time” scam was ruled illegal over 30 years ago, since it was so egregiously abused by management. Since then, if you force LEOs to work overtime, you have to pay them. In money. I have two settlements to prove it.
The way it was explained to me was that if I wanted (me!) to have comp time, it had to be taken in the next pay period. So if I worked 92 hours this pay period, I could take 12 hours off in the next. There was no “carry over”.
The scam from the employee side was that certain employees would “work” an extra hour or two a week. Over 50 some work weeks that added up to a full week of comp time and then they would decide they would take their comp time at Christmas, and comp time took precedents over vacation time.
Management would scam as explained, as a “critical” employee, all holiday/vacation/comp time had to have management approval. So that big block of OT you worked would translate to management letting you go early on Friday every other week.
But the short of it, is too many cities are attempting to screw over their police force right now to prove they have the correct virtues.