Nassau County

Audit: NCPD overtime went well over budget

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The county comptroller released an audit last week stating that the Nassau County Police Department exceeded its overtime budget by $96.2 million over a six-year period due to systemic under-budgeting, overly optimistic savings projections and slipshod record-keeping.

“Our Police Department has done an exemplary job in keeping crime low and protecting our residents,” Comptroller George Maragos said in a statement. “However, certain management practices need to be revised in order to increase management accountability with predictable economic results, allowing more resources to be directed toward improving public safety.”

The audit determined that police overtime increased 93.7 percent from 2009 to 2014, to a total of $315.20 million — 44 percent higher than the $218.92 million budgeted for overtime.

Acting Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter lambasted the audit and its recommendations in an 18-page response, claiming that Maragos was either “incompetent, biased or has a political agenda.” Krumpter countered each of the report’s six major findings, and called the audit “deeply flawed” and “unethical.”

He said that Maragos’s team focused on the overall cost of overtime hours rather than the number of those hours, unfairly inflating the findings by failing to adjust overtime pay for increases in compensation over the six-year period. As a result, he argued, the increases in cost appear greater than they actually are.

“Comparing overtime dollars in 2009 to overtime dollars in 2014 is tantamount to comparing apples to oranges,” Krumpter wrote.

The audit included a compilation of “court overtime” as well. Officers are contractually entitled to a minimum of four hours of overtime when ordered by subpoena to appear in court, even when they do not testify, or when the hearing is not rescheduled within 48 hours. From 2011 to 2013, the NCPD paid 65,905 hours of court overtime for officers who did not testify, which the audit stated, cost the Police Department about $4.5 million.

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