CPD took steps — but nowhere near enough — to rein in runaway overtime, IG says

The Chicago Police Department has taken some steps but nowhere near enough to rein in runaway overtime, identify “patterns of fraud and abuse” and prevent officer fatigue, Inspector General Joe Ferguson concluded Monday.

In a follow-up audit, Ferguson acknowledged CPD has “fully or substantially implemented four corrective actions” he suggested in October 2017 and partially implemented seven others.

They include making the long-awaited switch from paper-based to electronic timekeeping; requiring police officers to swipe in at the beginning and end of their regular and overtime shifts; and making overtime reports a regular feature at Compstat meetings.

But Ferguson noted two of his directives were ignored.

Neither CPD nor the Chicago Fire Department has implemented a time-keeping component that requires employees to place their hand on a biometric reader to prevent them from swiping in and out for each other.

And the Chicago Police Department has ignored Ferguson’s demand for a policy that would “limit the number of hours officers may work in a given period, including secondary employment, as is already the practice in other jurisdictions.”

“The goal of such policies is to ensure that officers who work in a high-stress environment are well rested and ready to effectively serve the public,” Ferguson wrote.

The Chicago Police Department said it has no intention of “placing controls over overtime hours or total hours worked by CPD members,” the audit says.

“CPD stated that ... the primary responsibility for being fit for duty in every respect must be placed where it belongs — with each officer — unless specific circumstances dictate or necessitate otherwise.”

Any changes impacting wages, overtime and secondary employment need to be addressed at the bargaining table, a police spokesman said.

In the meantime, the massive restructuring unveiled last week will bolster accountability by “giving each commander more personnel and resources to go along with the overtime budget they are required to manage,” CPD spokesman Howard Ludwig said.

The mayor’s office, meanwhile, blamed the decision to opt out of the biometric component on “technical limitations” of the city’s aging time and attendance system, which “rejected an unacceptable number of swipes during pilot testing,” Ferguson wrote.

“The mayor’s office stated that the city has begun a multi-year process to purchase a new time and attendance system that will allow all city employees to use the biometric component, at which point CPD and CFD members will be required to use it as well,” he added.

During a wide-ranging interview with the Chicago Sun-Times last week, interim Police Supt. Charlie Beck blamed a historic “lack of accountability” for runaway overtime that saw the department spend $131.2 million through Nov. 30, matching the 12-month total for the year before.

Ferguson agreed the “road to getting a handle on costly overtime” at CPD “remains a long one” and that, while CPD has “begun implementing much-needed corrective actions,” internal accountability mechanisms needed to assure full compliance “remain lagging.”

For example, CPD still doesn’t use swipe in and swipe out data to process payroll. Instead, its timekeepers continue to “manually record hours worked, calculate overtime and compensatory time and enter hours worked in the payroll system.” Manual data entry carries a “substantial risk of error,” he said.

“Unnecessary and unaccounted for overtime practices drain critical resources needed for officer training and support and other key foundational components needed for the long-term reform efforts now underway,” Ferguson wrote.

In October 2017, Ferguson concluded Chicago was wasting millions on police overtime because of “inefficient management” that failed to control costs, eliminate fraud or prevent officer fatigue.

Ferguson’s allegations about a “culture of abuse” were underscored by schemes he claimed were so prevalent, there are names for them: “trolling,” “paper jumping,” “lingering” and “DUI guys.”

The inspector general’s poster child for a “DUI guy” was an officer who made 56 DUI arrests, presumably so he could appear in court and get the overtime.

In the follow-up audit released Monday, CPD still “did not acknowledge the existence of” those “four specific potentially abusive practices,” Ferguson wrote.

Now-fired Police Supt. Eddie Johnson considered the initial audit so damaging to the department’s credibility, he rushed back to work to respond to the findings, even though he was still recovering from a kidney transplant.

Johnson argued then the strategy of using overtime to mask a manpower shortage had “run its course.”

He promised to hold supervisors accountable for overtime and conduct random audits to make certain they do. He also vowed to revise department directives governing overtime that had not been updated since 1994.