By Sean McDonnell
cleveland.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Two patrol officers tripled their salaries last year by working enough overtime to earn more than $250,000 apiece.
These officers earned $176,000 and $171,000 in overtime in 2025, on top of a base salary of $86,918. But they weren’t alone.
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Records obtained by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer show that 44 members of the Cleveland Division of Police at least doubled their salaries through overtime.
Among the 44 were 33 patrol officers, who earned anywhere from $170,000 to $265,000 by year’s end. Records show seven supervisors, two dispatchers and two data analysts, also doubled their salaries by working enough extra hours.
Records also show 155 police employees, ranging from officers to captains and dispatchers, racked up $50,000 or more in overtime pay, while 779 made more than $10,000 in overtime in 2025.
Cleveland’s ten highest paid employees in 2025 included four patrol officers, two sergeants, a lieutenant and two employees in public utilities who similarly worked heaps of overtime. Only Director of Port Control Bryant Francis outearned these employees, at an annual rate of $396,000 per year.
But the department’s overtime bill ran far deeper. Cleveland police logged $27 million in overtime in 2025 — a figure city officials attribute in part to a staffing shortage that has left the department with more than 100 vacancies among its uniformed officers.
Councilman Mike Polensek, who chairs city council’s public safety committee, called the $27 million a record number. He and his colleagues have long pressured the city to hire more officers, both to reduce overtime and better serve residents.
“Where’s the police? Why don’t we have traffic enforcement? Why don’t we see them patrolling our neighborhood? That’s what we hear at neighborhood meetings,” Polensek said.
The division is authorized for 1,350 officers but currently employs 1,240, Police Chief Dorothy Todd said during budget hearings.
Cleveland’s officer count peaked at 1,550 in 2019 and declined to 1,142 by 2024. Last year was the first time since before the COVID-19 pandemic that new hires surpassed departures.
Mayor Justin Bibb told cleveland.com earlier this year that his goal is to hit 1,350, but he acknowledged the city would have to “work our butts off to meet that number in 2026.”
City spokesman Tyler Sinclair said it isn’t fair to look at overtime costs in a vacuum, saying that higher pay to attract officers and greater demands for police presence raise that figure.
“We were losing members left and right in 2022-2023 because we weren’t paying them competitive wages, and that is why Mayor Bibb launched his RISE initiative,” Sinclair said. That initiative, Sinclair said, has attracted more than 250 police recruits in the last 2 years, and Cleveland is seeing a 49% decrease in attrition over that same time frame.
In Bibb’s first term, Cleveland slashed its officer hiring timeline from 18 months to four, while adding expedited recruitment events where candidates can receive conditional offers within days. The city has also raised police pay by 34% and introduced incentives including a $5,000 signing bonus and expanded eligibility rules aimed at broadening the applicant pool.
During budget hearings, Police Chief Dorothy Todd told city council that overtime didn’t just come from shortages, but also extra police work.
Two examples are street takeovers and rashes of vehicle break-ins, where officers are being deployed ahead of any suspected activity.
“We took preventative measures to stop those, and that included a lot of overtime,” Todd told council.
She said officers are also working special events, like Cleveland Browns games, parades and protests using overtime.
And there are special circumstances like helping federal taskforces or manning Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport. The airport specifically is a place where officers must meet minimum staffing for security purposes.
Police overtime has long been a sore spot that council prods each budget hearing.
In 2025’s budget hearings, council members criticized Bibb’s budget for predicting just $14 million in overtime — despite costs surpassing $26 million in 2024 and 2023. The city is now budgeting for $22 million in overtime for uniformed personnel in 2026.
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