By Maggie Trovato
Baltimore Sun
BALTIMORE — The Baltimore Police Department improperly paid officers $36,224 over three years for working on scheduled days off, while failing to consistently document approvals and enforce payroll rules, according to a city audit released Wednesday.
The review found that all 62 cases examined in one sample lacked required leadership authorization records; some supervisors were unaware of documentation requirements, and internal reviews repeatedly flagged overtime problems without requiring formal responses from department management.
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“Every dollar is important,” Baltimore Police Deputy Chief Andy Smullian said in response to the audit’s findings. “That number should be zero.”
The findings, presented by City Auditor Josh Pasch to Baltimore’s Board of Estimates, come days after the release of a report by the Baltimore Office of the Inspector General , which found that the Baltimore City Fire Department had also paid more than $30,000 in back pay to employees for time they didn’t work.
The audit also raises new questions about payroll oversight in a department that has repeatedly promised reforms, defended a proposed $656 million budget earlier this year and now requests an additional $22 million to cover a fiscal 2026 budget deficit attributed to overtime and vehicle maintenance. The city’s budget committee will review that request next month.
Repeated warnings
The audit identified supervisors’ failures to follow established payroll policies and collective bargaining agreements. Some supervisors told auditors they did not know they had to upload written documentation to Workday.
Since 2025, the department’s Performance Standards Section has conducted quarterly reviews of the five officers receiving the most H-day pay — when leadership cancels an officer’s day off from work — in each of three ranks: officer, sergeant, and lieutenant.
Auditors found that those reviews repeatedly identified the same documentation deficiencies and issued similar recommendations. But auditors did not request formal responses from police management.
The findings add to years of scrutiny over Baltimore police overtime spending.
A state audit released in January 2024 found that Baltimore supervisors at multiple levels failed to adequately monitor overtime and enforce department policies. Police officials responded by promising additional training, regular audits and improvements to payroll oversight.
How officers were overpaid
When the Baltimore Police Department needs additional staff for a critical or special event, like Artscape, leadership can cancel officers’ H-days.
H-days are essentially weekend days for officers, though they don’t always fall on Saturday and Sunday.
When an officer’s H-day is canceled, that officer is entitled to 8.5 hours of straight pay plus four or six hours of penalty pay, depending on how much notice they received.
Pasch said that each year, the police commissioner can designate five days, known as commissioner days, where officers across the department are required to work, even if it’s their H-day. On those days, officers are paid overtime but do not receive penalty pay.
Pasch said the city audit found that from fiscal year 2024 through fiscal year 2026, 141 officers received penalty pay on commissioner days even though they were not supposed to, totaling more than $36,000.
Other findings from the audit
Pasch said that while officers are supposed to reschedule their H-days when they are canceled, they rarely do and instead opt for overtime compensation.
He said that the department has failed to consistently document written approvals for H-days, making it difficult to verify whether the cancellation pay they received was justified. He said documentation should support that the officer tried to swap an H-day before opting for overtime.
“The financial risk there is that there’s an increased potential for unnecessary overtime hours,” Pasch said.
The system BPD uses to track hours and pay also has limited checks to prevent the department from processing penalty payments not permitted under department policy, Pasch said.
Smullian said the department is working with city information technology officials to establish additional safeguards, including checks designed to prevent unauthorized penalty payments from being processed.
He said BPD is also negotiating with the police union to increase the number of commissioner days or change how they are assigned, potentially reducing the number of canceled days off that trigger additional compensation.
“It’s not something we can do unilaterally,” Smullian said. “I think we mark this under ‘easier said than done.’ But we very much would like to see a change. We’re committed to it.”
The department’s efforts
Smullian added that staffing vacancies drive the department’s reliance on overtime and canceled days off, especially when major events or critical incidents require additional officers.
“Major city police departments are going to have major events,” Smullian said. “They are going to have critical incidents, probably more so than a suburban jurisdiction would. And given these needs, it’s going to necessitate either canceled H-days or increased overtime.”
City Council President Zeke Cohen acknowledged that police departments nationwide face staffing shortages. He said Baltimore must continue to “aggressively recruit and build” its force while confronting the reality of its staffing challenges.
“At what point do we reset the conversation and say, this is where it is, we need to do better on recruitment and retention, but we also can’t operate in a paradigm that is no longer a reality?” Cohen asked.
Have a news tip? Contact Maggie Trovato at mtrovato@baltsun.com, 443-890-0601 or on X @MaggieTrovato.
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