"“At this staffing level, more officers will be forced to work excessive overtime, which in turn will accelerate attrition,” Nguyen said in a statement. “We cannot meet the needs of our community without forcing officers into more shifts.”

It is true that OPD is severely understaffed by hundreds of officers. Mayor Barbara Lee is attempting to shrink the staffing gap, with plans to increase the number of officers. "

Police unions often resist head count increases if it eats into the overtime scam. And zero cops are "forced" into this, but it's one of the biggest piggy at the trough scams going.

Further, police are just shockingly, unbelievably unaccountable for often being profoundly terrible and completely incompetent at their jobs. Budgets and headcounts keep exploding -- it is usually far and away the #1 cost for local budgets -- while the often far-right police force intentionally doesn't do their job to make some sort of statement.

Adding funding and number of cops, it turns out, is almost meaningless, and instead crime just fluctuates on other society macro elements.

I am not a defund the police person, but policing is at the very top of institutions that needs an extremely close investigation and retooling, being torn down and rebuilt on new foundations if necessary. If police were held to the efficiency standards most of the rest of society is, we would have an infinitely more capable policing system at much lower cost. Instead we have lazy, inept cops who intentionally do a shit job because it earns them overtime, and also sticks it to that "lefty" mayor, etc.

And for the "put their lives on the line" people who invariably drop their rhetoric as a diversion -- https://www.ishn.com/articles/112748-top-25-most-dangerous-j... -- dangerous, but if you aren't also hero worshipping delivery drivers, garbage collectors and roofers, maybe tone down the nonsense.

Sitting in a cruiser playing candy crush counting as "work" is funny when you compare it to the fact that flight attendants only get paid for the time when the door is closed on a plane.

Whoever it is, that's always the case in government. It's not their money and any accountability like this is so rare, that there's no need to do things like audit the books or to ask that there be a documented reason why this particular cop needed to do all that OT. The chain of responsibility just abruptly terminates with someone who has the prerogative to approve things without explanation, and that person doesn't (legally or department-policy-wise) owe anyone an explanation, and he won't give one. (Because usually the answer is "Because he's in on the scam himself")

Note: I'm not saying that every civil servant scams. Far from it. I'm saying that conditions are nearly always ripe for this type of thing because those in charge won't be held responsible, and those at the very top are elected officials, who are in more and more areas only vulnerable to primary challenges. So if you have a good enough rep for "supporting team blue/red" you can cruise past plenty of oopsie-daisies like this by just scoring cheap political points.

Oakland mayor and progressive DA ousted amid crime complaints: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/11/09/oakland-mayor-progr...

As a Bay Area resident and someone who leans very far left - I was not surprised by the impact, and outcome of "policy by slogan".