The news is about the Overtime and how it’s payment is done.
Well, it’s was surprising for the ABC2 Investigators when they found how heavily the Baltimore Police Department is getting paid for their overtime (OT) working. If you consider the rough estimates, then all the salaries and money can mount upto $23 million for one year.
ABC2 Investigators made a note about this, and later it revealed how officers took thousands of dollars for a day’s overtime. This had to stop!
Are the police officers being paid the highest salary?
Sundays are the main working days, that was a sarcasm.
If you find a group of men and women near the M & T Bank Stadium in their blue-colored uniform – they are from the overtime gang. Oh yes, you get to watch the Ravens weekly games but people are geared up mainly for the pay.
Other special events like the NFL Kick-Off concert which was organized at the Inner Harbour also had a similar thing. It’s true that events like these, which are grand does require a special security force. But many of the officers tend to do extra work on that particular day so that they could enjoy all the monetary benefits.
On further investigation, it revealed that the police officers took in about 5 times 5 million this year. This makes upto $25 which is the additional charges and benefits provided to the officers on doing the overtime.
Further, ABC2 Investigator adds – ‘we then started looking at the salary statements and details of the officers. It showed that the officers had taken over $30 millions more for their overtime sessions.’ This figure is much different than the department expenses that it started earlier.
On asking about the expenses of the department, they replied that their expenses are included in the budget only. This meant that the $25 million had their additional expenses covered for the year.
But the overtime expenses don’t count for more than 4 million in a year, so what about the additional figures? To this, we got the answer that the additional pays were for the covering up during special events and any other sports match – they get a hiked pay for such special overtimes.
An average police officer gets a normal salary of $43,000, but with the overtimes – the figure went like $60,000, $80,000 and in some cases it hit the $100,000 making them the highest paid employee in the state with an higher pay than the Mayor herself.
The numbers shown here are small comparing it to the real picture, and we could hope that the issues get resolved asap!