An Oakland Cop Joins the Bureaucrat Hall of Fame June 23, 2019 by Dan Mitchell

The Bureaucrat Hall of Fame recognizes government employees who go above and beyond the call of duty in terms of getting over-paid or being under-worked.

Or both.

Adding insult to injury, many recipients of this award are employed by bureaucracies that shouldn’t even exist.

Today we’re going to look at the Oakland police department, which is a part of the government that presumably should exist (though Camden, NJ, shows that maybe we shouldn’t make that assumption).

The Oakland PD is notorious for being over-compensated, but one cop stands out.

Eric Boehm of Reason has the sordid details.

When Oakland, California, police officers are needed at Golden State Warriors basketball games and other special events, Malcolm Miller is the officer in charge of making those assignments. Often, he assigns himself. As a result, Miller has become one of the highest paid officers in the department. He’s earned nearly $2.5 million over the past five years—most of it overtime pay—according to data collected by Transparent California, a watchdog group.

What a scam.

It’s highly likely that Mr. Miller is a basketball fan, so he’s figured out a great racket.

He basically gets a big pile of money for going to the games.

He and his colleagues are making out like bandits.

…he’s hardly the only officer to take advantage of poor oversight and a general lack of accountability. According to the audit, 217 officers worked roughly 520 hours of overtime last year, helping to cost the department more than $30 million in overtime pay—about twice as much as had been budgeted. Over the past four years, overtime expenditures have ranged from $28 million to $31 million. Proper documentation of overtime work was lacking in 83 percent of cases, the auditors found.

Though Officer Miller might not be the worst of the group.

One officer was paid for more than 2,600 hours of overtime—equal to 108 days of round-the-clock work—in just a single year.

So how do cops get away with this scam?

Simple, they make sure to negotiate contracts that have sweetheart provisions that they can exploit.

And why does Oakland agree to such contracts?

Well, as Michael Ramirez illustrated, bureaucrat unions give lots of money to state and local politicians, and those politicians then conspire with the unions to give them contracts with the sweetheart provisions.

Let’s close by looking at an example of this kind of scam.

Perhaps the most stunning part of the audit is the explanation of a department-wide policy that allows Oakland cops to accrue 1.5 hours of “comp time” for every hour of overtime worked. When an officer cashes in that comp time and isn’t working, other officers have to work overtime to fill the gap. That creates a cascade of additional overtime pay—10 hours of overtime creates 15 hours of comp time, which some other cop has to work, earning 22.5 hours of comp time (if they’re also working overtime), and so on.

Here’s the accompanying illustration.

How ridiculous. Extra money for overtime, combined with being able to work fewer hours in the future. Which then gives other cops an opening to rack up more overtime pay.

Everyone wins…except for taxpayers.

P.S. Some bureaucrats earn admission to the Bureaucrats Hall of Fame by misbehaving. Often in very strange ways.