Records show officers in two places at once
In September 2020, the Banner asked the Boston Police Department why
their records appeared to show officers collecting overtime for court
duty while simultaneously making arrests and traffic stops sometimes
miles from the nearest courthouse.
A spokesperson for BPD told the Banner at that time that the department was conducting an investigation into the instances, which appear to violate its overtime policies. Yet two years later, BPD officials have yet to disclose any results of their investigation and, as of last week, haven’t even confirmed an investigation is ongoing.
The Banner reached out to the department for comment last Wednesday and received no response. On Friday, a spokesperson for the department told the Banner the Office of Media Relations had been busy and hadn’t had time to respond to the query.
City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo, who requested the court overtime records from BPD officials in 2020, said the department’s lack of action is unacceptable.
“It should not take over two years to verify whether individuals were in two places at once,” he said. “Our officers deserve a process that is conducted in a timely manner and the public deserves findings. Failure to provide them in a timely manner unnecessarily contributes to harming the public trust in our police department. I hope they release their findings to the public soon.”
Combing
through BPD overtime records in 2020, the Woke Windows Project, an
organization that investigates allegations of police misconduct, found
multiple instances in records obtained by Arroyo that spanned from 2016
to 2019. Police officers are entitled to overtime pay at the rate of
time-and-a-half when they make court appearances while not on duty.
Commonly, officers who work nights collect such pay when called into
court to testify or present evidence.
Officers
receive a minimum of four hours overtime, even in instances where an
officer drops off a packet of evidence and leaves the courthouse
immediately thereafter. The records Woke Windows compiled were of
officers who claimed more than four hours and either made an arrest, a
traffic stop or engaged in a field investigation observation report
(FIO) at some point past the four-hour mark in the claimed overtime.
The Banner further eliminated instances in which officers conducted FIOs or arrests
inside or in the immediate vicinity of a courthouse, and still counted
126 cases where officers appeared in BPD records to be on duty while
collecting court overtime.
In
recent years, BPD officers have been disciplined for collecting
overtime in instances where they were either not required to work
overtime or not eligible for such pay. Ten Boston police officers were
disciplined after the department in 2011 conducted an internal audit
that found more than 300 instances of questionable court overtime
filings by members of the Drug Unit. A 2012 Boston Globe analysis found
that over a two-year period, BPD officers had collected more than 400
hours of overtime pay for appearances that were not requested by
prosecutors.
Such misconduct is widely regarded as theft of public resources.
Over
the last two years, city councilors have zeroed in on BPD’s growing
overtime. The department regularly overspends its overtime budget and
even did so in 2020, despite declining crime rates and the absence that
year during the pandemic of parades and special events such as First
Night that normally drive overtime spending.