Overtime hours in the Nassau County Police Department 3rd Precinct has spiked by 20 percent in the first six months of 2013.
Inspector Sean McCarthy, the commanding officer of the 3rd Precinct, said last week the increase was the result of manpower shortage and was not related to the consolidation of the 3rd and 6th police precincts last year.
“We’re down people, we’re down cops,” McCarthy said. “We have overtime no end due to our current staffing levels.”
He attributed the staffing reductions to the precinct’s current force of 327 uniformed officers to attrition related to officers taking incentive package to retire over the past several years.
“I think we got to this number because of the buyouts that were offered several years ago,” McCarthy said. “We’ve been down manpower for a number of years.”
The rise in the 3rd Precinct overtime rate was lower than the 33 percent increase in overtime hours countywide in the first five months of the year, according to the Nassau County comptroller’s office. Overtime pay increased 13 percent for police countywide in the first six months of 2013, according to county comptroller’s office.
McCarthy said he could not estimate the cost of the overtime in dollars. Inspector Kenneth Lack, a spokesperson for the county police, said the department had not broken down the cost of overtime by precinct.
“Overtime is not necessarily an evil. There are events that are going to require overtime. That’s not a bad thing,” McCarthy said.
The 3rd Precinct is the largest of any police precinct in Nassau County and following its consolidation with the 6th Precinct last year now extends from the Queens border, east to include Westbury and Roslyn, south through Mineola and north through the Willistons to Manhasset and Great Neck. Total staffing in the precinct is 448 employees, including administrative officers and support staff, according to McCarthy. The precinct also has 40 people in its detective squad.
Major crimes in Nassau County’s realigned 3rd Precinct rose 8.41 percent in the first six months of 2013, according to the precinct’s year-to-year statistics.
Approximately 200 officers have left the Nassau County Police Department over the last several years due to officers taking incentive buyouts intended to reduce the cost of county policing and attrition, reducing the overall force from a peak of approximately 2,400 officers, Lack said.
“The overtime is really related to the attrition and retirement incentives over the last several years,” he said. “Certainly the incentives accelerated the attrition.”
The county paid $21.1 million in police overtime during the first half of 2013, up from $18.7 million during the first half of last year, according to the county comptroller’s office. The number of overtime hours worked grew 33 percent in the first five months of the year to 275,083 from 206,679 hours during the same period in 2012.
The county comptroller’s office estimated a 21 percent year-to-year hike in police overtime in its midyear projections last week.
The county’s Office of Management and Budget has projected police overtime by year’s end will be $60 million, exceeding the $44 million in overtime in the county budget.
Lack said overtime was also affected by seasonal circumstances and said he wasn’t sure how the police department’s projections compared to other projections.
“It’s hard to say. The overtime should be curtailing in September. I don’t know if our projection would be exactly the same,” Lack said.
McCarthy and Lack both said hiring more officers is the solution to the escalating overtime rates.
“When you have structural overtime, that’s addressed by hiring,” McCarthy said.
Lack said the police department is addressing the issue with the hiring of 30 new officers now in training and due to enter service in October. Lack said 80 more officers will be hired to start training in September and another 80 officers are to be hired in October. Depending on attrition, he said 100 more officers could be hired in January.
“Overtime will be reduced as the county hires more officers, however, taxpayers continue to save $20 million annually from the elimination of 200 administrative desk positions in the department,” said Brian Nevin, a spokesman for Nassau County Executive Mangano’s office.
Thomas Suozzi, Mangano’s Democrratic opponent in the county executive race, said police overtime “skyrockets” every year under Mangano’s administration.
“Mangano’s consolidation attempts have been a complete failure and have achieved no savings. He cut the number of precincts in half yet overtime went up by two-thirds,” Suozzi said in a statement. “The consistent rise in police overtime costs presents yet another example of Ed Mangano’s fiscal mismanagement.”
Lack said the consolidation was not a factor in the overtime rates.
“Even with the reduction in staff, there’s more cops on the street than there were before consolidation,” Lack said.
