This was just recently published and it’s pretty crazy when you think about it. I have no doubt that these people work very hard, and their base pay reflects that too. But some of these folks had to average over/around 80 hours per week in order to make the overtime pay like they did, and it would be very interesting to see if the people with the huge ‘Other Pay’ figures (vacation/sick time cash outs, etc) had similar payouts over the past 5-10 years.
Is this likely fraud/abuse, or standard practice towards the end of a career to drive up the highest 3 year average pay to increase pension payments?
Total Pay ranking
Overtime Pay ranking
I dont know if I should thumbs up or down...
Sure doesn't look on the up and up.
I’m not educated on the matter to give an opinion on pay but I’m not sure I could be paid enough to be law enforcement in Portland.
I’ve worked in several areas in and around Portland for multiple years. Hell no.
It’s not fraud or abuse…
the OT opportunities are ALWAYS available in law enforcement and there always guys that will work ALL the overtime they can get!
How is it ANY different than anything in the private sector?! A motivated guy, regardless of his profession will do whatever he can to provide for a family, the future etc.
all municipalities guard against any employee committing any kind of fraud, and a Tempe Police officer was arrested recently for stealing OT pay.
Those guys are earning their pay in a job not very many folks are willing to do…
Plus… There is also always the consideration that perhaps a guy wearing a uniform guarding the stadium full of citizens could make as much as the guy wearing a uniform guarding a football…🥴
Not sure what's going on there. In the past, 2080 was considered the standard number of hours employees worked in a year. Not sure if that's still true, but using that number Eric Pederson was making about $67 an hour.
Don't know if the $140K number reflects benefits also or just "pay". Saw an article several years ago that civil service employees didn't pay into SSI, but could retire and work 5 or so years and then receive full SSI also. I could be mis-remembering or rules may have changed.
I'm not judging others work or value, but it appears some are compensated well and sometimes have additional opportunities to add to their retirement that others may not get. There was a recent circumstance where a high ranking or decorated police woman had extremely high OT that had her working some crazy number of hours each week.
I know pay rates can vary by cost of living in an area, but I'm amazed by some of the salaries I see for firemen, school officials, etc. Maybe I made the wrong choice going into a career in industry....
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Probably not fraud, but almost certainly abuse.
Anyone here watch Long Island Audit on the Youtubes?
It’s Aplman, just don’t pay attention to him and move on.
I get what you are saying, but every so often we hear another incident of overtime (or unworked but paid time) from police agencies across the country so saying that it can't be fraud or abuse isn't completely factual. As for comparing it to private industry, most of the time you don't really want to work people double the hours because your labor costs are quite a bit higher and your quality of work can severely diminish because of the exhaustion factor. You'd think that with the stress involved in policing, overtime would be more limited and time away would be almost forced.
But at the same time, logic doesn't always prevail. The job that I left earlier this year had an issue similar to this pop up. Our VP of Operations was from Colombia (like most of our upper management team) and he was also a real micromanager. He tried to dictate headcount at all of the manufacturing plants down to almost the day level, definitely the weekly level. He always rounded up or down in whatever way made it sound like you needed less labor. If your max level productivity was 191 widgets per hour, he'd use 200 or even 250 for his calculations and if his calculations said that you needed 9.9 people for a function, then he'd round down to 9 at the most. When you looked at larger groups, if your calculations said that you needed 138 people he would just start subbing in 130 and almost no one would ever correct him. Early on I tried to remind him that our labor force had some decent tenure and approximately 10% were either on PTO, sick time, or LOA at any given time. He could never quite grasp that concept, and to be honest I think that the company that he work for from Colombia (that we bought) likely didn't really give time off anyway.
For reference, just the top 20 officers ranked by overtime did the hours of 13 'extra' FTEs.
Phoenix PD had a front page newspaper story about the PD OT, from memory it was about $6 million and the top OT earner's were hitting like $350k a year just in OT.
But part of the problem is they are 600 officers short of "fully staffed" so they have to authorize OT to handle the work load.
The "defund the police" movement and the vilification of LEO's over the past 5 years scared a lot of the younger generation away from wanting to make that a career.
Almost all police officers work off duty jobs to make extra money too, traffic control, private events, etc.. But that adds up to a lot more than your standard 40 hour work week.
Abuse or fraud is never ok, but they deserve every penny that they earn. Tough job.
It sounds like you had a managerial class run amok? A fuckery of leadership manipulating the numbers?
My wife works for a food processor that was started by one driven man and run by him for many successful years before handing off the business to family members who were running it into the ground from laziness.
They handed the leadership to someone who brought in a bunch of crazy expensive managers to replace incompetent family. Company is still being bankrupted with debt but boy that new ceo and all the managers are making bank. Meanwhile morale down at the plant level is at all time lows with experienced maintenance people who are undervalued by the higher ups looking for work elsewhere.
sorry, probably didn't have anything to do with the original post.
No cop or fireman deserves or earns $400k a year lol.
A few years ago there was an article going around that the highest paid New York City employee for that year was a plumber that made close to 400k . He worked more overtime hours than regular hours for the year. The guy was up there in age too.
If we are getting bitter...
As a farmer who grew a crop that was exported, the once every 7 years or so west coast port strikes pissed me off.
The last strike they had under Obama lasted forever. The average wage at the time for a port worker was $140,000...and they were striking!
I figured there fuckery cost ME $30,000 in lost income the next year as buyers in Asia filled their needs elsewhere.
Well, it’s a head scratcher for sure.
Wish I could do that. Sign me up.
Are some of you saying that you would not take advantage of OT and private guard duty if you were given the chance. Obviously, I believe most would. Hard to walk away from that kind of supplimental income . It represents the difference in living middle class, and living upper middle class. The difference between those two spots on the life train are huge.
Our tax dollars aren't really there to make a bunch of upper class people though, regardless of how much we may respect their role. Wages and respect are separate aspects, otherwise why not makes all cops and firemen into billionaires. Salary for cops in an expensive state like California is $90k-110k. Starting pay for a cop in Dallas is $70k. Those are the two states with the largest economies in the nation. Some cops in Georgia start at $40k. Nobody should be at 4x or 10x of these taxpayer funded salaries.
Anyway, most of the funding for this stuff comes from the state, so if some states want to take taxes from the little blue collar guy fixing lawnmowers that scrapes by at $18hr and use that to turn cops into millionaires, then they are welcome to do that. That blue collar guy can keep being milked if he wants to, or vote to change it, or move to a new state, or set government buildings on fire. However it goes, is how it must be.
If they are working every Saturday , 81 hours a week is 13.5 hour days. It’s not uncommon to work those kinda hours in construction for a sustained period of time. Police officer's could do that , but who knows.
Police departments have “other pay” usually available from outside the department. This occurs when bars hire them to be “in-uniform security” or funeral procession escorts. Those are the two that jump out but I’m sure there is lots of other opportunities that I don’t know about. It’s department dependent but usually the companies approach the department to hire officers for off duty but in uniform assignments. That allows the department the ability to track who is in uniform and working. Drunk bar patrons don’t understand the police on scene may be security not on duty patrol so they make complaints(founded or unfounded) to the department not the bar. The pay is done directly through the department not to the individual people. Most public service won’t let you wear your uniform for pay outside of official duty unless it is sanctioned through the department. It would open up the departments to liability they don’t want. Some people work a ton, some people don’t but it can make a significant difference in your annual salary. The downside is working until bar close, disrupted sleep cycles, loss of home/family time.
None of those base salaries jump out as anything other than a decent base rate for some fire/police employees with more than 5-15 years on the job. There are a few with some high OT numbers but the base looks in range for a first responder in a city with a pretty expensive cost of living.
I can’t speak to Portlands payroll and accounting but I would suspect that’s what the other income category is.
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The people shown by OP and the ones that make the news are the few top earners on departments. OP didn’t show wages for the newest of recruits. What do the salaries look like for the bottom 8 on the department? Portland has 800-900 officers but is below the national average for officers per capita so that means more officers are needed on OT to provide appropriate coverage.
Most first responders aren’t in it to become millionaires on a yearly basis. You shoot for those numbers in retirement though, just like everyone else. From a salary perspective, you should pay first responders a living wage for the area they work. Police/fire/ems tend to provide better care when they are invested in areas. That investment comes a lot easier if they live in and have families in the cities where they work. If you don’t pay a living wage it can mean long commutes and less personal investment for those providers. You can’t compare salaries across the USA because cost of living is different. 80k-110k in San Francisco probably provides pretty similar buying power to 40k in small town Georgia. Add a spouse and two kids and try to pay 40k to a first responder in CA, puts them below the poverty line.
None of this is meant to troll anyone in the thread, just offering a different perspective for discussion.
As the OP, there was no intent to say that the base wages were too high or suspicious in any way. The part that raises questions, for me at least, is the overtime pay and ‘other pay’ that was described by the source as primarily ‘cashing in’ PTO and Sick time accrued.
I think that we would all agree that being an LEO anywhere is a very tough job, especially mentally and emotionally. It’s extremely difficult even when fully rested, healthy, and alert. Most of us would also likely agree that people can work extra time for a while and still maintain that alertness and mental stability that is essential for any LEO.
What it sounds like we may not agree on is whether people can maintain that needed level of health, alertness, and mental sharpness when basically you’re turning your full time job into effectively two full time jobs. I’m a bit suspicious that either there’s some ‘creative accounting’ going on with the timekeeping (and there’s been plenty of cases that show it occurs in police departments nationwide), or people are being allowed to work in a condition in which their physical and/or mental fitness is compromised due to it going on for so long.
Officer Pak is an example. I have no reason to believe that he’s anything other than an honorable servant of the people. He basically worked two full time jobs for the police bureau last year. A quick look through prior years shows that this year wasn’t some glaring anomaly. He’s been working massive amounts of overtime for years, so my initial thought is that he’s really putting in that time or else he would have been ‘caught’ by now. But it would definitely be worth auditing, and it should be automatic that anyone who is reporting working an extra 30% above their standard hours be scrutinized heavily.
So that blends into the second point further. How can a police department anywhere justify working officers that many hours and expect them to be able to perform the job reasonably well? Again, we (almost) all believe that performing the job full time is usually a physically and mentally draining job. Not just a little bit draining, but one of the toughest jobs mentally that you can choose to do. Now you stack another job that adds 50-75-100% more strain and mental conflict on top of that? It’s truly a recipe for failure for not only the individual officers but also for the department allowing/requiring that level of overwork. And it can’t help but make the community less safe from officers making mistakes or bad decisions because of their level of exhaustion.
Some public service agencies operate under a “Defined Benifit” retirement program. It replaces social security benefits for some public sector folks. Employee and employer contribute to the program similarly with requirements to work X amount of years to be fully vested. The more years you work, the higher your percentage of pay in your retirement. The 5 year thing is called Drop. The departments still recognize you as an employee but stop contributing to your retirement. Your personal contributions essentially go into a cash account that you receive when you retire. You can retire anytime during those 5 years but you can’t work more than 5. Your percentage that you earn also stops when you start the Drop. So for round numbers if you work 25 years and earn 2 .5% pay benefit per year. That leaves you with 62.5% pay benefit at retirement. If you choose to drop at 20 years but continue to work in the Drop you have earned 50% pay benefit plus what ever cash amount you earn for the rest of the time you are employed.
You can also contribute above and beyond to Roths, IRAs, 457s. Most departments do not contribute or match to any of those unlike the private sector. You can receive Social Security but you won’t get full benefits if you haven’t contributed. Some people have worked private sector before getting hired at public sector jobs, some work part-time while working public sector, some work post-public sector retirement. You are only allowed Social Security benefits based on your contributions and credits earned. You do not earn credits while only being in a defined benefit program.
I wasn't listing the wages across the country as a means of complaining about the gamut of typical salaries across the country, rather to show what's normal in order to highlight what's not normal. And what's not normal, or what shouldn't be normal, is when they make a million dollars in 2.5 years.
I agree there is a possibility of “creative accounting.” There are those people in every job type, first responders are certainly not immune to them.
If you have a metric to measure someone’s ability to work and perform at responsible levels that is easily, quantitatively and quickly assessed I’m sure all the governmental agencies would be willing to listen. I’m not saying that to be snarky. If you have that you could sell it to every agency, charge whatever you want and retire tomorrow.
Most first responding, public agencies have charters in their cities, counties or states. This lays out the expected service requirements including response times, minimum staffing models, rigs/vehicles in service, minimum and continuing education, minimum hiring standards, etc, etc. These are legally binding contracts with the cities. If said department is below minimum staffing for the day they are legally obligated to staff up to the minimum level through voluntary and mandatory OT.
Voluntary OT is generally self-policed( no pun intended). If you feel up to working and want to work you sign up. I may only want to work 10 extra hours and feel wiped out where you may still be fresh after 30 extra hours. I may feel rested and reset after 5 hours of sleep and you may need 8.
Most agencies do have a max amount of continuous service hours allowed built into employee contracts/manuals. This is present to make sure employees have the opportunity to be well rested. They don’t usually limit the annual amount of overtime because they still have to provide service to their cities. Plus, it allows for mandatory call back in extreme cases like what Portland experienced a few years ago, hurricanes, wildfires, floods, etc.
You can go to these city meetings that discuss spending, contracts and services. They are super exciting with lots of budget discussions. 🥱
I agree with you regarding working too much and burn out. Police positions are incredibly difficult to fill currently for all sorts of reasons. Generically, public sector jobs are in high demand during recession but government budgets are hurting with the inverse also being true, Budgets are better but demand is lower.
I agree that’s not normal and is open to interpretation based on public record numbers. I also know there are ways it can happen especially through very exceptional amounts of OT.
There are plenty of folks that work tons in the private side. You can have a trades guy that earns a pretty good living through 40-60 hours a week while someone else earns a great living in the same trade working 100 h/w, usually the company owner. This isn’t any different than a fire fighter or a cop that’s willing to work a significant amount of OT. It’s not healthy, physically or mentally for most people but some are willing to work that much.
How much further ahead financially would you be if you worked 80-100 hours a week at your job for years on end? Just a question cause I’m not willing to do that for years at a time. It’s fine to work extra hours for a little bit when needed but not that much for years. Some people are willing but it’s usually a very small percentage.
We are paying taxes that pay for that position to be filled. It could be an extra couple of hires or someone working OT.
It's not envy, so the privatized aspect of working more and making more in a capitalist workplace doesn't really have any meaning. My mindset is more about taxpayer spending. Even if we ignore the studies that show significant drop in performance after 8 hours, and even if we ignore the fact that we're paying 1.5x and 2x more than normal in order to have that decrease in performance in a position involving public safety that can be extremely taxing, I do not think that the everyday officer or fireman should be earning as much money from taxpayers as the President of The United States.
Just not from the socialized side, but they can obviously make as much as they want from the capitalist side. These numbers we're seeing are not W2 numbers, these are publicly available numbers because these are publicly paid wages. And I try to be consistent here, for example I don't think taxpayers should be funding pensions, though the typical 401k plan with employer match that's fairly common to the average person across the country is fine, but no pensions and no 20 year retirement pension with 40 year old retirees walking around on public dime for the rest of their life. These are supposed to be humble public servant positions, not public elite top 1% positions.
In theory I agree with you about public service workers not being in the 1% club. In practice, you aren't looking at the whole picture, just numbers on the screen. You have to be able to attract solid workers to these jobs. The OT is more than just someone fleecing the system. I concede that there are always going to be some people out there that do it but overall it’s a very small percentage. In general, there are national standards for response times and response types. Departments have to meet certain criteria and that factors into insurance ratings that business and homeowners pay. The higher the department rating, the lower the insurance cost is for that particular part of your insurance. If you live in a metro area with a large, all hazards fire dept you will have a higher ISO rating than if you live in a rural area with an all volunteer response model. This includes staffing. The breakover for OT costing more is much higher than people anticipate. You have so much other spending that isn't shown when you just look at pay numbers. If a department needs 100 people on the street every day you have to staff that model at approx 130-150 to allow for all sorts of things and not incur overtime. You have vacations, sick employees, sick dependents, family emergencies, family deaths, military leave for reservists and any other thing that comes to mind. Now, keep in mind that you have to pay for all these people. You have to run a testing process for them which is very expensive. You have to pay them once hired and put them through an academy which lasts for months. You have to have an academy site which needs appropriate props for teaching. This site needs maintenance and instructors. You have wages, insurance benefits, retirement benefits, uniforms, continuing education, etc that you have to provide for everyone. So sometimes its actually cheaper in the long run to pay overtime and run your staffing model lighter at 120-130.
Without getting into politics, I believe the presidential office is underpaid for the job that is done. They should have a significantly higher salary. In general, most first responders are paid decently but the pay v job responsibility actually tends to spread further from private as people promote. Many depts require a BS just to get hired. Most med-large departments now require a BS plus time on the job to promote to lieutenant plus some scene officer courses. Promoting to Captain has the same requirements pus more scene officer courses. Most entry level chief positions are now requiring a Masters with Emergency Management courses plus executive officer courses. Medium to large fire departments are in the 200-1000 people. LAFD is over 3000 people, FDNY is over 11,000. LAPD is over 10,000, NYPD is over 30,000. Officer level stuff means you're a direct supervisor of 3-7 people, sometimes stations, budgets, schedules. Chiefs just expand on that. You want critical thinkers that are able to operate independently from new recruits to the chief of the department. They are "first responders" to all sorts of emergencies that most people aren't willing to help on, from a cat in a tree/fender bender to terrorist attacks. Chiefs in a lot of these area are paid 200-300k as base salary in very expensive cities. Anyone in the private sector would be paid a 500k+ for these jobs that put you in charge of hundreds to thousands of employees.
You mentioned humble which is fine but you still need to attract decent people that can provide for their families. Who wants to do that kind of work but get paid minimum wages? Are you willing to go after a school shooter for 12 bucks an hour? Do they deserve to be paid a decent living wage? Do you want a a scumbag walking into your favorite grandparent's room at 3am to help them or do you want to a solid person doing that? Tell people they can only earn X amount and they need to be humble and you won't get the right people applying for the jobs, you won't be able to staff and then you are causing even more overtime. Is working private sector on your time off ok? Can your department say you aren't allowed? What's the difference between working part-time side jobs and working overtime other than it's paid with taxes?
BTW, most retirements aren't true pensions anymore. Employee and employers contribute and the funds are managed instead of having underfunded cities paying them out from taxes. It's paid out differently than a 401k but it isn't publicly funded after the initial contributions are made. Most first responders aren't able to retire after 20 years without significant saving/investing, just like the private side. The military can do 20 year retirements, most double dip and work private sector after retirement. Are you against that?
As previously stated, none of this is meant to be grossly argumentative, just an opposing point of view. Those admittedly are big numbers shown in the original post but they don't tell the whole story.
Finally.. someone who looks at the entire picture rather than just a few posted numbers.
Just to add to this, a lot of the OT is coming from side gigs such as working drug task force through your state Attorney General’s office. Those OT hours are typically coming from your days off. The city pays you then the AG’s office will reimburse them.
Court OT also pays a substantial amount of OT. You have officers who will work 12 hour scheduled shifts, say 6pm-6am, then have preliminary hearings in the afternoon, have to be back into work at 6pm for another 12 hour shift, then have traffic court the following day throughout the day. If the officer has no court then that means they’re either a supervisor or they simply aren’t doing anything during their shifts. Then throw in your suppression hearings and trials. It’s an absolute nightmare trying to schedule around these things to make the department be at an acceptable manpower level and be able to give the officers enough time off.
Outside of increasing each departments manpower significantly (good luck convincing local leaders to do that) I don’t know what else could be done. If you’re a LEO, you’re going to work a lot of overtime just by having to attend court proceedings 2+ days per week.
Post a reply to: Civil Servant pay - (I’m pretty sure this isn’t just a Portland thing)