San Diego police overtime keeps climbing as city grapples with budget crisis

Almost every year for the past decade, the San Diego Police Department has exceeded its overtime budget, and it’s looking like this year won’t be any different.

The police department anticipates coming in roughly $10 million over budget by the fiscal year’s end in June, according to a mid-year report. The main reason: There aren’t enough officers to respond to calls and overtime helps bridge the gap.

But this comes as officials grapple with potential cuts to city services in the face of a looming budget crisis.

“Obviously we have some challenging situations,” Council President Joe LaCava said during a public meeting last week. “This is probably the most difficult mid-year adjustments that we’ve seen in the past four or five years.”

Since taking over last June, Police Chief Scott Wahl said he has restructured the department and took a hard look at staffing to better understand why it consistently underestimates overtime costs.

“We haven’t understood how far short we are (with staffing),” Wahl told city council members last week. “Now, we’re at a point where I can tell you exactly what my overtime budget will provide and the level of service we can expect in return.”

This comes one year after an audit revealed the department does not limit overtime — risking fatigued and sleep-deprived officers — and recommended requiring officers to take breaks of at least eight hours between shifts.

“Although rare, we found examples of officers working 16-hour or longer days with fewer than 8 hours off between shifts for multiple days in a row,” the audit found.

Some worked more than 2,000 hours of overtime, averaging nearly 90 hours of total work per week, every week of the year in 2023.

Police officials say change is on the way, though. The department last month set “clear limits on how many overtime hours our patrol captains can allocate to help keep us within budget while maintaining public safety,” Lt. Daniel Meyer said in a statement to inewsource.

“This is a big step toward staying on track with our OT goals,” Meyer said. “Of course, unexpected situations — like natural disasters or large critical incidents — can lead to unplanned overtime, but having a clear plan for what we can afford is a crucial move in the right direction.”

The department is still working to implement the recommendation to require eight-hour breaks, Meyer said. It set a target date for December.

‘Overtime is keeping us operational’

In San Diego, the police department’s staffing model is based on call volume and the time it takes to handle each call, Wahl said. It’s an equation that recommends a variety of staffing options based on what’s called uncommitted time — or free time.

The gold standard in policing is each officer having 40% of their day uncommitted — or 4 hours of free time in a 10-hour shift. Officers would use that time to build relationships, problem solve and otherwise be available for incoming calls to help with response times.

“The sad news with that ideal model is we are 1,000 police officers short,” Wahl said.

And then there’s 0% uncommitted time — where officers go from call to call to call, without any time to meaningfully engage. To achieve that without overtime, San Diego needs at least 330 officers every day. The city starts most days 60 officers short of that.

It’s a problem facing nearly every police department across the country.

In two public meetings, Wahl walked council members through the results of his deep-dive into the department’s staffing models, acknowledging that the department has not been diligent with bringing forward data to show just how bad it is.

“We are working hard to bring our overtime use in line with our budget,” Wahl told council members, “but let’s not forget that our overtime is keeping us operational.”

Council President LaCava said he was once asked what matters more, the police department’s overtime budget or its response time?

“If I represent my constituents properly, it’s going to be response time,” LaCava said, adding that reality exists even at a time when every dollar is critical. “I sometimes wish we would call overtime something else because it has a connotation, when it really is about having officers available.” 

In reality, the police department’s overtime budget represents a fraction of the city’s overall spending problem.

This all came out during a mid-year budget report to the City Council, where staff explained they anticipate spending over $108 million more than they’re collecting in revenue. And this is unfolding against the backdrop of a looming crisis in next year’s budget, starting in July, as officials anticipate a quarter-billion-dollar deficit.

Councilmember Kent Lee bemoaned the city’s management of its finances in the face of a crisis.

“I just don’t know how to explain that to anyone who is looking at our budget and saying, ‘You’re in a budget crisis but you’re still spending more money than you planned,’” he said.