The costs of mandatory overtime and abuse of the system have hurt the Police Department’s budget and pushed many officers to quit their jobs.
The costs of mandatory overtime and abuse of the system have hurt the Police Department’s budget and pushed many officers to quit their jobs.
The costs of mandatory overtime and abuse of the system have hurt the Police Department’s budget and pushed many officers to quit their jobs.
Good morning. Today we’ll look at the New York Police Department’s billion-dollar problem with overtime, and a new partnership in Nassau County that has local detectives helping the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort.
The Police Department’s big spending on overtime — more than $1 billion last fiscal year — has been lucrative for some, but painful for others.
My colleague Maria Cramer reported that about 100 department employees made $300,000 or more in the 2024 fiscal year thanks to overtime payouts of as much as $200,000, according to payroll data. Compare that with the police commissioner, whose salary is $277,000, according to city records.
Because of understaffing, police officials say, officers are often pulled into mandatory overtime shifts. Stacking up overtime just before retiring can pay off for officers, whose pensions can be based on their final year’s earnings, including overtime. But what about everyone else?
For Angeliesse and Mike Nesterwitz, who met and married as New York Police Department officers, all those extra hours became unbearable. They each made more than $100,000 a year, but they barely saw each other because of work. Like an increasing number of officers, they found a solution: They quit.