I wrote last month about the $55,393.95 in overtime City Councilor Anthony Nolan took home last year, helping him earn $122,361 as a police officer, making him one of the best compensated city employees.

I have no qualms with Officer Nolan volunteering for a lot of overtime and being compensated for the many hours he works.

It highlights a problem with the system, though, which police officers routinely use to turbocharge a lifetime of pension payments, which are calculated on the employee's highest three years of pay, including overtime.

My specific complaint with Officer/Councilor Nolan is that it is a conflict of interest for him to be serving on the City Council in the first place, voting, for instance, on budgets that, in the end, can lead to police staff shortages that require the city to pay more police overtime.

This week, news surfaced that raises Nolan's conflict of interest to a comic extreme.

It is also the latest twist in New London's years-long saga of police dogs, a crazy narrative that involves charges of racism, with statistics showing dogs biting more minorities than whites, a mayoral veto of a City Council vote ordering up more dogs and a council override of the mayor's veto of the four-dog mandate.

Dogs even surfaced in the acrimonious litigation between Police Chief Margaret Ackley and Police Union Chief Todd Lynch, the department's K-9 trainer.

The lawsuit unearthed this memo from Ackley to a city gadfly: "Time to throw another bomb; Maybe you should send an FOI request to VIEW all lawsuits concerning police K-9's as well as all civilian complaints concerning Todd Lynch."

I have consequently thought of Chief Ackley, like Mayor Daryl Finizio, as generally anti-police dog, at least anti-police dog trainer.

But along comes a memo this week from Ackley to the City Council suggesting she wants to buy two new police dogs. Oddly, this is one of her first new initiatives since returning from a year-long paid leave imposed by the mayor as he tried, but failed, to fire her. I know, you can't make it up.

The chief said in her memo that one of the dogs she wants to buy is a giant schnauzer, often used in European police work, that is hypoallergenic.

And guess who, among all the city police officers aspiring to be a dog handler, is also allergic to dogs? That's right, the well-compensated Officer/Councilor Nolan.

It doesn't seem that long ago when the chief was attacking a city councilor, claiming he was harassing her. Now she seems to be in council accommodation mode.

When I sent an email to the chief Friday to ask about the giant schnauzer, Deputy Chief Peter Reichard responded on her behalf.

He said the hypoallergenic dog is indeed meant to accommodate Councilor Nolan and his dog allergies. Reichard said Nolan is only one of the officers who have shown an interest in becoming a dog handler and it is within the chief's discretion to fill the position with whomever she likes.

He said the acquisition of the schnauzer, which must be imported from Europe, where they are bred for police work, would be more expensive than a traditional dog, but it would cost about the same amount to train.

I poked around on some police handler blogs and learned that the schnauzers are generally well regarded for police work, though they require more grooming and more exercise than many other breeds.

Dog handlers often put in for overtime for their dog's care. But that shouldn't bother Councilor/Officer Nolan, who does not seem to have a problem working the extra hours.

Union President Lynch once told a news reporter that the reason he retired from the state police with a large pension was that he had to work a lot of overtime with his dog for the crucial three high-earning years.

I sent an email and left a phone message for Nolan, asking him to talk about his dog-handling ambition, but never heard back.

I was going to ask him if he has thought of a name. Would he also like an imported cruiser? After all, his allergy might prevent him from using the other K-9 cars and equipment.

I wanted to ask him about the conflict of his vote and veto override to mandate more police dogs. Does he not see how that vote could now directly and specifically benefit him?

Nolan responded on Facebook to the column about his overtime by suggesting that I was focused on black officers. Another of the officers I specifically named for high overtime is also black. I named him because he was a ranking department manager, a captain, and also earned the most amount of overtime last year, $65,635. I never met him and didn't know then that he is black.

I also named Lynch, who is white, as a high overtime earner, because he is the union president and once made news because of his high police pension.

"Now it has become a topic of important discussion ... when two black officers make what any other officer made through a system created to work for them," Nolan wrote on Facebook about my report on his overtime.

Sorry, Councilor, but the issue here is not race.

You have a conflict of interest as a councilor, one complicated when you become, through overtime, one of the higher earning city employees — in a poor city — and when the police chief decides to import a dog from Europe specifically for you, when lots of other officers not allergic to dogs are prepared to do the job.

This is the opinion of David Collins.

d.collins@theday.com

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct