By Suzanne Smalley, The Boston Globe
Less than 5 percent of police officers working in Boston’s largest and busiest district collected a quarter of all the overtime paid in the three months before its captain was removed for vastly overspending his overtime budget, department records show.
District Captain John Kervin, who oversaw overtime assignments before his demotion in early October, was the district’s third biggest recipient with $16,226 in those 14 weeks.
A Globe analysis of a department audit of payroll records ordered after Kervin’s demotion indicates that 17 officers made a total of $230,217 of the $915, 859 in overtime that was paid to 356 officers and civilian employees between July 1 and Oct. 7.
Department officials say the concentration of overtime money in so few hands does not necessarily indicate favoritism. They say that crime in the district, which covers Roxbury, declined, and drug arrests increased during those 14 weeks, which saw the Democratic National Convention, summer festivals, and a new anticrime program. Each of those events and programs required officers to work extra hours.
Still, officials say this week they are revamping the expensive, and sometimes wasteful, overtime system.
“Overtime is far and away the most costly item that is contributing to our budget deficit status right now, and so that has gotten our attention immediately,” said Chris Fox, a former city and state finance administrator who was hired in late October by Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Police Commissioner Kathleen M. O’Toole to devise department-wide measures to limit overtime costs.
“I’ve been working very closely with Superintendent James Claiborne to introduce some reforms there so we can control it,” Fox said this week.
These overhauls include a system for tracking overtime spending on special events so that captains will have to justify hiring more officers than department guidelines allow. Previously, district captains had more discretion on whether to bring in more officers for an event.
Fox is also working to define more precisely duties performed by officers on overtime, so officials can easily detect spending patterns. For instance, overtime hours worked during Senator John F. Kerry’s election-night rally were coded by what each officer did.
Fox said to ensure officers do not cheat, he plans to refine the system so department officials can spot whether officers are tardy for court duties or bill for overtime when a court date has been changed. Fox said he is working to improve communication between the Police Department and the district attorney’s office because, he said, officers often show up to court on the wrong day, costing the department unnecessary overtime. Historically two-thirds of the overtime budget has gone to court appearances.
The Globe’s analysis of department payroll records does not include overtime costs generated by court appearances because they are legally mandated. With that amount included, the district’s overtime expenditures during the 14 weeks would jump to $1.13 million.
Fox is also weighing changes to the system under which officers receive an extra day off at the discretion of their district captain as a reward for exemplary work. This adds to overtime costs because other officers have to work that shift.
“We’re not denying that they have the right to do it, but it’s something that has to be watched, and officers have to be educated,” Fox said.
Claiborne, who dismissed Kervin from his leadership post after discovering what Claiborne called “flagrant” overtime misspending, said discretionary days off were abused in the district.
“It generated incredible amounts of overtime,” Claiborne said.
Kervin, who had become district captain in June, did not return phone calls seeking comment this week. Neither did Joseph Gillespie, president of the Boston Police Superior Officers Federation, the union that represents Kervin.
Kervin also approved $697 in overtime for his brother, Lieutenant Timothy Kervin, though the lieutenant worked in another district on the other side of the city. Claiborne said that it is not against the rules for Kervin to make overtime money available to his brother as long as the hundreds of officers entitled to it first had turned it down.
Department officials said overtime is always made available first to people in a given district who have earned the least extra pay.
If none of them wants to work the available hours, the overtime shift is made available to officers in the neighboring district and then citywide.
Claiborne said officers track whether overtime is being divided fairly.
“Cops guard each other,” Claiborne said. “They don’t let someone get rich at their expense. . . .Those who aren’t working don’t want to work. And those who want to work are going to work at every opportunity.”
He could not explain, however, how 158 officers in Kervin’s district received less than $1,000 in overtime during the 14 weeks, while the top recipients each got more than $10,000 and several earned far more overtime in those three months than they did all of last year.
By November, the department had used more than 70 percent of its $20.1 million annual overtime budget only four months into the fiscal year.
Menino declined to comment, but his spokesman, Seth Gitell, said: “Mayor Menino supports the efforts of Commissioner O’Toole and Chris Fox to reform overtime abuses at the BPD.”
Sam Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, a business-funded city government watchdog, said Fox’s arrival heralds greater budget oversight at the Boston Police Department.
“It does seem like a small number is making a disproportionate amount of the overtime, but I also think that’s in part a management issue,” Tyler said. “It’s the history of the city that human services is not as strong as it ought to be, particularly in terms of training for higher responsibilities. . . .Chris Fox is where he is because the commissioner recognizes there is a need for more focus on administration of the department, particularly overtime.”