Humongous police overtime costs have multiple communities around California in a tizzy. And no wonder: There are cops logging so much OT that they make more than the chiefs of their departments. Some have even made more than any other public employee in their area.
This is news, but it’s also a story as old at this reporter. I have written about police officers and firefighters taking home huge overtime paychecks for almost as long as I’ve been a journalist. That’s more than 40 years.
Back in the early 1990s, for example, I covered firefighters who earned distinction as “S.O.D. hogs” because some as much as doubled their pay by working Scheduled Overtime Duty. Then-City Controller Rick Tuttle called for a review as a large budget deficit loomed.
Today, leaders in Santa Barbara, San Diego and Oakland have sounded the alarm about ballooning OT payments to cops. Some police administrators suggest that part of the challenge has been providing adequate levels of staffing while forces have declined in size. That’s partly because of a backlash against police that followed the 2020 murder of George Floyd in Minnesota.
It’s hard to know who qualifies as the state’s police-OT champion, but recent coverage suggests some cops who might be finalists.
In Oakland, Police Lt. Timothy Dolan netted $711,000 in pay, including nearly $500,000 in overtime, for 2024, according to the news site Oaklandside.
A 26-year veteran, Dolan heads the Police Department’s traffic division and earns a good chunk of that whopping paycheck reviewing paperwork for traffic collisions.
Dolan told the Oakland news site that his work helps to generate revenue for the city and that the department’s overtime spending has been necessary because of understaffing.
“Reviewing and submitting the collision reports is a service we provide to the people we serve,” Dolan said in a statement to Oaklandside. “Finalizing reports in a timely manner will help resolve service complaints, as we have previously been backlogged in our reviews due to staffing constraints.”
In San Diego, Police Officer Jason Costanza earned $433,000 in 2023 by tacking $286,000 in OT onto his base salary of $108,000, according to reporting by KPBS.
The remainder of his compensation came from vacation payouts, car allowances and bonuses. That made him the highest-paid city employee for that year, the most recent one reported by the news outlet. A worker booking 40-hour weeks for 50 weeks of the year would put in a total of 2,000 hours. The San Diego officer logged an additional 3,151 hours in overtime, according to records reviewed by KPBS.
San Diego Police Chief Scott Wahl defended the large overtime payments to many officers as necessary to maintain an adequate number of units on duty. He called the payments “our life blood right now,” KPBS reported. But others in the community questioned whether officers working so many hours can perform their jobs adequately. A former head of the city’s police oversight commission called it “very concerning.”
Santa Barbara County has been the most recent community to engage in intensive discussion about the topic, after overtime for Sheriff’s Department employees jumped from $12.4 million in fiscal year 2021-22 to $20.4 million in the last full fiscal year. Twenty-nine employees made more in overtime than from their base salaries, according to a review by the county.
The potential for corruption became obvious when authorities arrested one employee — jail Sgt. Segun Ogunleye — on suspicion of dozens of criminal counts, including misappropriation of public funds, linked to padding of time cards to take home $175,000 for shifts he allegedly did not work.
The Board of Supervisors ordered an audit of OT use for the sheriff and other county departments, said it planned to eliminate loopholes in overtime rules, and will consider appointing an inspector general to oversee the spending. Noting that the county already faces cuts from the Trump administration, Supervisor Laura Capps told The Times that the department had “blown past its budget” too many times, requiring the county leaders to “restore fiscal discipline.”
(Jim Cooke / Los Angeles Times; source photo via Getty Images)
- Everyone has a worst traffic choke point in L.A. That’s why The Times ranked the worst Los Angeles intersections.
- The highest traffic volume of any intersection? Highland and Sunset.
- The lowest on the list? LaCienega and Centinela.
- New whistleblower documents detail substantial cuts the Trump administration made to training requirements for new immigration officers.
- More than a dozen practical exams that officers previously needed have been eliminated, the documents show.
- The training reductions come as ICE plans to add more than 4,000 new enforcement officers.
- Although the FBI highlighted the need for autism-aware policing as early as 2001, many officers still receive little or no autism training.
- People on the autism spectrum are stopped by police at higher rates than their neurotypical peers. Some encounters end in tragedy.
- L.A. County deputies are learning that sometimes the best way to handle a crisis is simply to wait.
- Robots are heading into the kitchen. Restaurant critic Jenn Harris asks, should we welcome them?
- In his latest column, Gustavo Arellano writes about the anti-Latino agenda behind Trump wanting Americans to have more kids.
Cars Land, which opened at Disney California Adventure in 2012, is a triumph of a theme-park land.
(Paul Hiffmeyer / Disneyland Resort)
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Jordan Stolz won the 1,000-meter speed skating event at the 2026 Winter Olympics.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Today’s great photo is from Times photographer Robert Gauthier at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan.
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