Denver has piled up at least $431,500 in overtime pay and material costs to monitor and police the Occupy Denver protests, a tab officials say is required to balance the group’s free-speech rights with public safety.

When added to what the Colorado State Patrol has spent on watching the group, the total tab for taxpayers has reached $782,689.

The city on Monday released a dollar breakdown for overtime and materials from early October, when demonstrations began, to Nov. 13. The tabulation doesn’t include regular staffing expenses, which are already accounted for in each department’s budget.

The bulk of the overtime bill comes from the Police Department, which racked up $264,000, and the Sheriff’s Department, whose employees took in $153,000.

The State Patrol spent $351,189 from Sept. 13 through Nov. 20, but that includes overtime pay, regular pay and logistical expenses. The patrol hasn’t yet broken out overtime bills for the effort, said Trooper Nate Reid, a State Patrol spokesman.

“The resources allocated on a daily basis for the Occupy Denver protests are part of the city’s general operations, and any additional costs are incurred only to help balance First Amendment rights with concerns for the health and safety of the protesters, officers and public,” said Mayor Michael Hancock’s spokeswoman, Amber Miller.

Demonstrators believe that the city has overreacted to their presence, said math tutor Pamela Zubal, 29, who is taking part in Occupy.

“From our point of view, it is absolutely excessive and unnecessary. With budgets as tight as they are in this city and around the country, it is really crazy that they are spending so much for police in riot gear for people protesting in a park,” she said.

It is better to spend money on overtime than take a chance that there are too few law officers on hand when needed, said City Councilman Charlie Brown.

“What I have learned is there is never enough and never too many because something could happen and you don’t have enough and then we get blamed,” Brown said.

Occupy Denver is sucking up more than just cash, he added. Police are being shifted from patrol beats elsewhere in the city to handle the demonstrations.

Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson said moving police downtown sometimes does thin the regular ranks of patrol.

“But we always have officers at people’s door when people call,” he said. “That is our priority.”

Recently, Chuck Sampson, president of the neighborhood group Uptown Alliance Association, voiced concern to three City Council members after listening to a police scanner as dispatch calls went unanswered for what he described as unusually long periods on the weekend of Nov. 12.

“I haven’t seen any more situations where response time has been dramatically slower,” Sampson said Monday.

The demonstration’s cost could rise even further when damage to the park, where police cruisers have parked on the grass and protesters have camped and spray-painted graffiti on stone work, is factored in, Brown said. The grounds were restored this year as part of the Broadway Terrace Improvements included in a $9.5 million restoration project.

“We are approaching a million, especially when you add the damages to the park. Oh, boy, the First Amendment is not cheap,” Brown said.

Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com