Little Rock Police Officer Making Six Figures With Overtime
By: Lauren Trager, KARK 4 News
Updated: April 15, 2013
Some Little Rock cops are logging thousands of hours of overtime, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But Thursday, a KARK investigation revealed one officer tops them all, making more than most city leaders, all because of time-and-a-half pay.
At this hour, Little Rock police are now conducting an investigation into the time card punches of every one of their employees.
We too, have been sifting through hundreds of pages of documentation, digging into the time cards of the officers on our streets.
Close to 80 officers short right now, Chief Stuart Thomas says overtime's the only way they're getting all their work done.
"When you have fewer officers, the work doesn't change and our obligation to respond doesn't change," Chief Thomas said.
But our investigation into officer's overtime pay reveals a small number of officers, appear to be working a big chunk of the overtime.
From the start of last year until last week, we found just seven officers who logged more 1,000 hours of overtime.
The officer who collected the second highest amount received compensation for 1,700 hours.
But we found one officer in particular who had the highest, by far.
In the time period we pulled, that person logged close to 3,000 hours of overtime, collecting from city coffers close to $75,000 in time-and-a-half pay.
Overall, overtime boosted her salary to over $128,000: almost as much as her police chief, more than the Finance Director for the city and several other top dogs.
Chief Thomas says they're looking into the overtime payments, but right now, don't suspect wrongdoing.
"At this point, we don't think there's any misrepresentation of the hours worked or abuse of the system going on?" the reporter asked. "Not at this point," said Chief Thomas.
Chief Thomas says the officer works accident reconstructions and often volunteers her time for other assignments.
Now, they'll see if someone else could have been doing her work to cut down on overtime.
KARK chose not to reveal the name of this officer until the investigation is complete, but we did go to her listed address to ask for her explanation.
We were told to leave the property.
Moving forward, Chief Thomas says they'll re-evaluate every aspect of their overtime system, ensuring that supervisors, too, are held accountable.
"You want to make sure supervisors are making good decisions and generally they do," Chief Thomas said.
We've learned that the officer in question here has filed a harassment suit against the Chief of Police. She filed it after this investigation into overtime payment began.
But Thursday, a KARK investigation revealed one officer tops them all, making more than most city leaders, all because of time-and-a-half pay.
At this hour, Little Rock police are now conducting an investigation into the time card punches of every one of their employees.
We too, have been sifting through hundreds of pages of documentation, digging into the time cards of the officers on our streets.
Close to 80 officers short right now, Chief Stuart Thomas says overtime's the only way they're getting all their work done.
"When you have fewer officers, the work doesn't change and our obligation to respond doesn't change," Chief Thomas said.
But our investigation into officer's overtime pay reveals a small number of officers, appear to be working a big chunk of the overtime.
From the start of last year until last week, we found just seven officers who logged more 1,000 hours of overtime.
The officer who collected the second highest amount received compensation for 1,700 hours.
But we found one officer in particular who had the highest, by far.
In the time period we pulled, that person logged close to 3,000 hours of overtime, collecting from city coffers close to $75,000 in time-and-a-half pay.
Overall, overtime boosted her salary to over $128,000: almost as much as her police chief, more than the Finance Director for the city and several other top dogs.
Chief Thomas says they're looking into the overtime payments, but right now, don't suspect wrongdoing.
"At this point, we don't think there's any misrepresentation of the hours worked or abuse of the system going on?" the reporter asked. "Not at this point," said Chief Thomas.
Chief Thomas says the officer works accident reconstructions and often volunteers her time for other assignments.
Now, they'll see if someone else could have been doing her work to cut down on overtime.
KARK chose not to reveal the name of this officer until the investigation is complete, but we did go to her listed address to ask for her explanation.
We were told to leave the property.
Moving forward, Chief Thomas says they'll re-evaluate every aspect of their overtime system, ensuring that supervisors, too, are held accountable.
"You want to make sure supervisors are making good decisions and generally they do," Chief Thomas said.
We've learned that the officer in question here has filed a harassment suit against the Chief of Police. She filed it after this investigation into overtime payment began.
Comments
Much of that overtime is from federally funded programs, such as the Selective Traffic Enforcement Program. Federally funded, as in, the federal government gives the city money, which can only be used for certain programs. She volunteered to work this program, so a lot of her overtime cost the city nothing.
Jeff J.
June 3, 2012 at 4:26 pm
