I don’t even remember how many times over the course of our California’s Gold conversations I’ve said that this was going on, but finally there’s some substantiating evidence.

Hundreds of L.A. County sheriff’s deputies racked up massive amounts of overtime, according to a new audit that said some of the extra work violated county rules and may have hindered the deputies’ performance.

L.A. County Auditor-Controller Wendy L. Watanabe’s office found that 348 deputies between March 2007 and February 2008 worked more than 900 hours of overtime—the equivalent of an extra six months of full-time work.

County auditors found that the agency lacks overtime policies and rules that limit cumulative overtime and that even in non-emergency situations, overtime is often not pre-approved by managers.


“Employees who work significant amounts of overtime may not be physically/mentally capable of performing their jobs,” Watanabe wrote

The audit report completed Friday was made public over the weekend by County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky. The Sheriff’s Department exceeded its overtime budget 104% on average in each of the last five fiscal years, the report said. The department needs to reevaluate its overtime budget that on average was $82.5 million more than planned in each of those years sheriff’s managers flouted work schedule rules, the report said.

Fourteen of the top 20 overtime earners in the department repeatedly violated rules prohibiting excessive double shifts and six strung together more than 12 consecutive days of work, the audit found.

Sheriff’s Department timekeepers, who are supposed to note such violations, rarely flagged them, according to auditors. Overtime was not the department’s only problem, the report found. A small sampling of employees on sick leave found that nearly a third were overpaid, and a review of 15 industrial accident cases found that overpayments were made in nine cases because of department actions.

This would be my Christmas Lebron to rich’s Kobe, but after reading through some of the comments (in particular, some comments from self identified police officers) I’ve split my opinion on the matter. First of all, if this measure was in response to less new hires, it might acutally be a cost saving measure. $82,000,000 might be small potatos compared to the lavish state benefits of adding head count. Second of all, this is the bed that Los Angeles made, we surely must sleep in it. We ask for quite a lot from the Po-Pos, demanding crack downs on gangs, contracting with cities that most don’t want to deal with (like South LA) and then getting up in arms if some gang banger stubbed his toe getting in the squad car. Third, our prisons are a mess, filled with petty crime offenders and illegal aliens we as a society are ambivalent about. We care about our illegal aliens, we just need someone to whine to when Paco’s gas can hits our windshield on the freeway.

Some of the comments from readers actually were pretty convincing. I’ll just point out a couple from the self identified government employees:

So many of the complaints seem to be retaliatory because someone got a ticket or didn’t get coddled for being stupid. Be responsible, be an adult and lead by example. You are not a victim, although you’d obviously like to be. Deputies take law violators to jail, bottom line. Even though department polices and laws are more restrictive upon them than ever before. Hell, if a deputy tries to stop you in traffic, don’t stop! They’ll face departmental discipline if they pursue you for just “failing to yield.” A suspect’s financial status, race, religion matter in no way. It’s up to the district attorney or city attorney to file the case. Misdemeanor laws (though not all) require observation as opposed to reasonable cause. Deputies working overtime are not just assigned for the fun of it but fulfill a purpose such as contract obligation, Title 15, etc . In addition, the departments union agreed to extend our current contract for another 2 years without negotiation and the state government has levied an additional 10% tax on us. And one last thing, many deputies stay well after their shift, on their own time to finish their reports. Reports to cover the same complainers who have “lost” their cell phone or want to make a report against their child’s school mate for “sexual harassment” or a “threat” because some extended family member keeps prank calling them. If you really want to save money, quit being petty!

On this I would agree with this Officer (if that’s true), the pettiness of using the police as personal authority dictators has peaked in this city, and if everyone’s up in arms about the money now, listen to the cop and quit being petty. This is the part that we little pansies own, peeping out of our window with the Sherrifs on speed dial. We want these people as a service to us, an audit like this only goes to show us that all this pettiness adds up. Running society on the broken window theory comes with a pretty hefty price, and one of the largest police departments in the country is showing us the price of our demands.

There’s another aspect of this development too, one that I’ve been harping on since I saw seven or so sherrifs lounging at a bus terminal, running a “sting” on people travelling without a 1.50 bus pass. As Peter Griffin would say, this really grinds my gears, and in a recession and double digit unemployment the last thing you want to hear is that we need to pay more taxes so that this kind of crap can go on. This overtime scam I’ve heard from somewhere, so I also agree with this person:

As an LA County employee, at a downtown LA Superior Court, I can say that there is way too much waste in our government. It used to bother me when people said that government workers were lazy rude, but I can now say that I completely understand why that is the perception.

I work in a courtroom where my LA County Sheriff Department deputy (bailiff) works about 4 hours a day and as soon as proceedings are concluded, he is off to watch TV or horse around with the other deputies that have nothing to do. They are all paid for the entire day, by the way at a great salary. The waste continues when the court reporter leaves after working for 4 hours max but getting paid for 8. The interpreters follow suit leaving to go home, go shopping or run errands (all while on the clock) after only 1-4 hours of work. Walk into a courthouse in the afternoons sometime and see empty courtrooms yet be aware that an entire staff is still being paid until 5pm. I see it every single day.

I don’t want to bash the good, hard-working and honest deputies or government workers, there are plenty of them too and they deserve to be recognized. But the waste, the money we pay to people that are not working, that contributes greatly to the budget crisis, needs to stop.

My sentiments exactly, but the problem with this is the Unions. Sure, I’d love to sing the praises of the 95th percentile of people who probably are out there crapping us private guys Tiffany Eggs, but the very idea of joining a union means that you will not distinguish yourself, individuals who display candor will be swallowed by the collective effort. Much like the case with teachers, it would be much easier to say things like “you can’t say this about everyone doing this”. No, you actually can when you are speaking about a Unionized job. That’s why they joined it in the first place, on the premise that multiple unified voices are better than one.

So, while there’s probably much bigger fish to fry, and I’m sure the “County Kings” are releasing this at a time when they’re lighting cigars with our tax dollar, but this is what the people see. That’s what I saw that triggered this very topic of discussion, and here we are about a half a year after I started talking about it seeing it first hand. So instead of getting more cops, allowing for more overtime, getting results on crime we’re going to get a sum total reduction of effort. Less overtime (as the article states), less focus (inevitable) on serious investigations, and a weakening bond of trust from the public.