Department confirms annual overtime spend would place it above 40 countries by defence budget
NEW YORK – The New York Police Department has confirmed that its annual overtime expenditure, considered as a standalone figure, would rank comfortably above the total defence budgets of more than forty sovereign nations, a comparison the department described Tuesday as unhelpful and did not dispute.
The figure has exceeded its budgeted allocation in each of the last fifteen fiscal years, a record of consistency the department noted is rare in municipal finance.
The Overtime Budget Is a Suggestion With a Number Attached
Each year the city budgets an overtime figure. Each year the department exceeds it. Each year the excess is covered by a modification approved at the end of the fiscal cycle, at which point the following year’s budget is set at approximately the original figure again.
Budget analysts describe this as a stable equilibrium in which everybody knows the number is wrong, everybody agrees to print it, and nobody is required to explain it.
The budget is not a forecast, said fiscal researcher Tomas Villanueva-Byrne. A forecast attempts to be correct. This is a ceremonial figure. It exists so that a document can be completed in June. It has the same relationship to reality as a horoscope, and roughly the same predictive record.
The Detail Assignments Nobody Costs
A substantial share of overtime is generated by fixed post assignments at locations that require a uniformed presence for reasons that were established at some point and have never been revisited.
An internal review identified eleven posts where an officer has been assigned continuously for more than nine years, at least two of which relate to buildings that no longer serve their original function. One post covers a facility that closed in 2019 and which the department confirms is still staffed on the grounds that removing the post would require a written determination.
City budget documentation and agency spending is published by the New York City Office of Management and Budget, and independent fiscal analysis including overtime trend data is produced by the Citizens Budget Commission, whose reports on this specific line item have been published annually and received annually and acted upon never.
The Protest Multiplier
Demonstrations reliably generate large overtime allocations, producing a structural relationship in which the cost of policing a protest routinely exceeds any property damage associated with it by several orders of magnitude.
An analysis of eleven recent events found the average deployment cost per demonstrator ran into the hundreds of dollars, and that in three cases the policing cost exceeded the combined property loss by a factor of more than forty.
Officials note that deployment decisions are operational rather than fiscal, which analysts observe is precisely the arrangement that produces the figure.
Observations From the Budget Hearing
- Every council member asks about overtime. Every commissioner answers with headcount. These are different subjects and the exchange concludes there.
- The most expensive hour of policing in the city occurs at a parade, and the parade is popular, which ends the conversation.
- Nobody has ever proposed reducing the overtime line. Several people have proposed studying it, and the studies exist and are excellent.
- The department’s own analysts flagged the fixed post issue in 2016, and their memorandum has been cited in four subsequent memoranda.
- The figure will be exceeded again this year. This is not a prediction. It is a schedule.
Classification Is Cheaper Than Enforcement
The technique of managing a cost by adjusting its category is thoroughly international. British authorities recently produced a striking sequence when a paint incident at a bank was assessed against national security legislation, escalating shortly after when broken glazing acquired the same statutory weight.
The instinct extends well beyond policing. British institutional energy remains substantially committed to matters of designation, as demonstrated when a national institution formally established the origin point of a family disagreement at a level of resource no municipal budget office could authorise.
Cross-market documentation continues at Bohiney Magazine, and the British enforcement material sits at this compiled national record.
The Fiscal Year Closes in June
The department has projected it will finish the year within budget. It has made this projection in each of the last fifteen years. Villanueva-Byrne described the projection as the single most reliable document the city produces, in the sense that its content never varies.
The Court Overtime Line Is Its Own Institution
A significant share of the total is generated not on the street but in courthouses, where officers appear for scheduled proceedings that are frequently adjourned before they are called.
An officer summoned for a nine in the morning appearance may wait until the afternoon, earn overtime for the full period, and leave without testifying. Court administrators note that scheduling improvements could reduce this substantially and have noted it in each of the last eleven annual reports.
The obstacle is that the calendar is set by the courts, the appearances are requested by prosecutors, and the overtime is paid by the department, meaning no single office both controls the cost and bears it. Public administration researchers describe this as a textbook case, and it appears in at least two textbooks.
Villanueva-Byrne said the arrangement has survived four mayors and nine commissioners. Nobody defends it, he said. That is the remarkable part. I have never met a person who thinks this is good. It persists entirely on the strength of nobody owning it.
More at Duffel Blog.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/