Small state police force loads up on overtime STATE SALARIES

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For months after the Agnews Developmental Center in San Jose was closed, a special state-run police force patrolled the grounds of the board-and-care hospital and collected overtime for guarding a nearly empty facility, state records reveal.

The officers were among several dozen statewide who have significantly boosted their paychecks, or even doubled their salaries, with overtime pay, enabling some to earn more than $150,000 a year, a California Watch investigation has found. The state-run police force, called the Office of Protective Services, last year paid about $2 million in overtime to 80 of its officers.

The officers work at five facilities that house about 1,800 patients with intellectual disabilities in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, Tulare and Sonoma counties. In San Jose, patrol officers at Agnews claimed hundreds of hours of overtime after the institution closed in March 2009, finance reports show.

In total, the police department's payroll has increased 50 percent through overtime in the past four years. Several of the officers' overtime payouts would have required them to work 70 to 100 hours a week the entire year to earn the extra cash.

Twenty-two officers, about one-fourth of the entire police force, have claimed enough overtime to double their salaries - a rare occurrence at other large and small police agencies. The average salary, including overtime, for the 22 officers is about $124,000 a year.

One officer working at the state's center in Tulare County acknowledged in an interview that he received overtime pay for hours spent sleeping at work.

Quality questioned

As the Office of Protective Services has accumulated overtime, questions have been raised about the quality of the work taxpayers have received from the police force.

A recent California Watch investigation found that over the past decade, the Office of Protective Services failed to conduct basic police work even when patients died under mysterious circumstances. State officials have documented hundreds of cases at the facilities of abuse and unexplained injuries, almost none of which have led to arrests.

At the Agnews Developmental Center in San Jose, individual officers accumulated 200 to 460 hours in overtime pay to patrol nearly empty buildings in the three months after the facility shuttered.

The Department of Developmental Services operated a day outpatient clinic at Agnews, open for limited hours for two years after the closure. In a written statement, state officials said the agency "remained responsible for the safety and security" of the center as long as it owned the property.

Overtime called necessary

State officials said the Agnews overtime was necessary, "as the two full-time peace officers employed were insufficient to cover the required 24-hour schedule seven days per week."

The Office of Protective Services currently has 27 vacant jobs out of 94 positions, but most of the shifts are covered by increased overtime and by hiring retired officers for temporary duty.

The base pay for the force averages about $44,000 - relatively low compared with departments of similar size. At the Vallejo Police Department, for example, the average base pay is $98,000.

Safety and security

Terri Delgadillo, director of the Department of Developmental Services, declined to comment on her department's overtime payouts. But in a statement, the department said overtime was required "to meet the safety and security needs of the 24-hour licensed residential health care facilities" amid a state hiring freeze and worker furloughs.

"These residents require constant and immediate law enforcement supervision for all court hearings, community outings and medical appointments outside of the secure treatment area," the department said.

At the same time, the department said it has moved to curb overtime payouts. In 2009, it implemented a new policy that requires police supervisors to approve overtime requests in advance and to assess whether officers' workloads are reasonable.

Patricia Flannery, the official who oversees operations at California's developmental centers, that year also ordered an internal audit of police overtime. Documents from the audit, obtained through a public records request, do not show any attempt to evaluate whether the officers actually worked the hours on their timesheets.

'Aggressive actions'

Between 2009 and 2011, overtime payouts at the Office of Protective Services declined about 25 percent. State officials said their "aggressive actions" to curb overtime - as well as using closed-circuit cameras to monitor patients instead of security towers - has led to the drop in overtime.

Despite the changes, seven officers at developmental centers still managed to double their pay in 2011.

No one has claimed more overtime than Thomas Lopez, an entry-level patrolman at the Porterville Developmental Center in Tulare County. On top of his base salary of $54,133, Lopez's paychecks have included at least $80,000 in overtime every year for much of the past decade, doubling and tripling his compensation.

In 2008, Lopez collected $208,000 in pay, including $146,000 through overtime. To achieve that income level, Lopez would have had to work 107 hours each week for the entire year, without any vacation or leave time.

Sleeping on the job

Lopez acknowledged that his paychecks are large. "If I were investigating overtime, I'd be the top suspect," said Lopez, who owns seven houses worth $1.2 million and two classic cars valued at $50,000 each, according to two car auction websites.

When asked if he sometimes sleeps during overtime shifts, Lopez replied: "Yes."

City police and sheriff departments often generate large overtime bills. But the Office of Protective Services far outpaces other California law enforcement agencies in overtime, according to state and local payroll data of five agencies reviewed by California Watch.

Overtime accounted for 28 percent of all Office of Protective Services compensation in the fiscal year that ended in June 2010. Eleven officers doubled their salaries with overtime. By comparison, overtime was 12 percent of pay for police officers in Vallejo and at similarly sized Santa Cruz Police Department.

At larger agencies, such as the California Highway Patrol and the San Jose and San Francisco police departments, the percentage of overtime hovers between 6 and 10 percent of pay, an analysis of local pay data shows.