One Oakland police officer made $490k in overtime
Oakland faces budget deficits of $120 million annually through 2030, yet OPD's overtime spending has soared. In 2024, Lieutenant Timothy Dolan earned $493,247 in overtime, totaling $711,000 in pay, making him the city's highest-paid employee. Records show he logged 3,304 overtime hours, including 815 hours reviewing collision reports, with nearly half his overtime undocumented. Despite staffing increases, overtime rose 200% from 2011 to 2024, raising questions about resource management and officer safety.
“It strains credulity,” said Lindheim. “Ultimately, I don’t think there are enough hours in the day to bill this much overtime…. It doesn’t seem to pass the laugh test.”
- ApolloFortyNine
>This is generally about 1.5 times their normal pay.
>Lieutenant Timothy Dolan, a 26-year veteran who leads the traffic unit and serves as vice president of the OPOA police union, was paid $493,247 in overtime in 2024. Combined with his salary and other pay, this netted him a $711,000 paycheck, making him OPD’s highest-paid employee
Well I'm just going to have to guess his OT is actually 2x and not 1.5x, as otherwise he's working more than 80 hours a week. Or maybe he's only expected to work something like 20 hours a week?
>On July 9, Dolan reported he worked 23 hours. The next day, he worked 16 hours, and for the following three days, he worked 15 hours each.
It just looks like the attorney general in this area has been asleep at the wheel.
- tfigueroa
This is the system. I was a juror in a trial against Oakland where they were found to have been doing this - well over a decade ago. Oakland’s police department in particular has been in disarray for a very long time.
Employees in any profession are going to test boundaries and see what they can get away with. There was a similar report of a BART employee racking up incredible overtime as well.
It’s ultimately whatever the system permits.
- petcat
> A recent report by several civilian city unions found that over the past 15 years, even when department staffing increased, overtime continued to go up. From 2011 to 2024, staffing increased by nearly 9%. Over the same period, overtime went up by almost 200%.
Some quick googling seems to indicate that Oakland's population also increased nearly 15% in the same time frame. And then, of course, COVID wreaked havoc on everyone in the early 2020s. Crime rates went up, but police staffing remained the same, so more opportunities for overtime?
edit: actually, it looks like Oakland froze police staffing completely in the wake of the George Floyd event, and then cut the OPD budget by $15 million and also reduced sworn officer staffing from 780 to 730. Eliminated 50 police officer jobs.
- nelsonic
People who are payed by taxes should all be required to use time-tracking apps and justify their time. This is smells of abusing a broken system for personal gain.
- aftbit
The police unions own SF and Oakland politically. It's really quite embarrassing.
- gizajob
First there was the 10x engineer, now there’s the 10x cop.
- jjtheblunt
this police officer made most the $490k in overtime "reviewing traffic reports".
sounds like $50 of work for Gemini could replace $490,000 of that officer's overtime.
- monkpit
> […] even when department staffing increased, overtime continued to go up. From 2011 to 2024, staffing increased by nearly 9%. Over the same period, overtime went up by almost 200%.
The data in this article is good, but this piece is really weak. They should have just left this blurb out.