Sheriff to Pay $160 Million in Overtime

The Sheriff’s Department expects to spend a record $160 million this year on overtime to compensate for a shortage of deputies caused by a slowdown in hiring and rapid increases in attrition.

The department employs 8,094 sworn personnel to guard inmates in county jails and patrol streets, 1,171 fewer than budgeted, officials said. As a result, the department has no choice but to force deputies to work overtime.

The $160 million the department expects to spend this fiscal year on overtime, up from $123 million last year, is projected to include $45 million for staffing the jails.

Officials with the Assn. for Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the union representing more than 6,000 deputies, said the department is jeopardizing their safety by forcing them to work long overtime shifts, with some routinely working 16-hour days.

Forced overtime, the union officials said, has also had an adverse effect on morale and deputies’ family lives.

The effect has been most severe at the Men’s Central Jail, where some deputies choose to sleep in a dorm room rather than spend their few off-duty hours commuting to and from work, they said.

Deputies’ performance is particularly important at the downtown detention facility, where eight inmates have been killed by other inmates in the last two years.

“You can’t force a deputy to work an extra shift in an environment where constant concentration is required,” said union president Steve Remige. “We all want to be as sharp on the 16th hour as we are on the first. It’s just not possible.”

One deputy assigned to the Men’s Central Jail, who asked not to be identified, said he routinely works three 16-hour shifts per week and two eight-hour shifts -- 24 hours of overtime -- week after week. He said the long hours leave deputies fatigued and vulnerable.

“Fatigue leads to injury and it leads to lowering your guard,” the deputy said. “You’re not going to catch things like you would when you’re fresh. I go home, sleep and go back to work. That’s it.”

Sheriff Lee Baca said overtime is a necessity in law enforcement.

“If you don’t like working overtime, then you’re in the wrong job,” Baca said. “This isn’t a 9-to-5 job. You have to work overtime based on public safety. I say this because some people don’t want to work any overtime.”

He called deputies working 20 hours of overtime a week “the heroes of the department who understand what we’re going through, at great sacrifice to their families.”

Because the department is understaffed, it can afford to pay the overtime and stay within the $1.6 billion it has budgeted for payroll and employee benefits, Baca said.

“You can’t argue about overtime going up. You argue, ‘Are you balancing your budget?’ And we will,” Baca said.

Supervisor Mike Antonovich blamed the escalation in overtime on budget cuts imposed by the Board of Supervisors in 2001, which forced the sheriff not only to stop hiring but also to stop running academy classes, he said.

“That was a political decision and a wrong decision,” he said. “We’re still paying for the mistakes of the past.”

Antonovich is scheduled to hold a job fair with Baca near Palmdale today, and he said the sheriff needed to focus attention on recruitment. He also said the department should curtail the time newly hired deputies work in jails before they receive their first patrol assignments.

“That would help with the attrition problem and lift morale,” he said.

Baca said he hopes a vigorous recruiting campaign will help the department reduce the amount of forced overtime at the jails. The department has hired 488 deputies this calendar year and expects to hire 700 to 800 in 2006, Baca said.

“That’s why we’re hiring like we are, to not overtax the good will of our hardworking people,” Baca said.

The problem can be traced to a hiring freeze the department imposed after the supervisors cut its budget four years ago, according to an August report by Merrick Bobb, who monitors the department under a contract with the Board of Supervisors. In the recent round of hiring, the department has struggled to keep up with attrition, Bobb reported.

“Since resuming hiring efforts last year, the LASD has fallen short of its hiring goals.... With an estimated department-wide attrition of 450, this level of hiring will not keep up with department losses,” Bobb wrote.

Maintaining security within the jails is so important that the department on occasion has forced deputies assigned to patrol to work overtime shifts at the jails, Undersheriff Larry Waldie said.

“Yes, they’re tired. Perhaps they’re not as sharp as they should be,” Waldie said. “It’s not a good situation, but it’s something we have to do at this point in time.”

The department has spent $1.5 million on a recruiting campaign that includes billboards, airplane tow banners and signage in health clubs. Sixteen deputies are working full time recruiting, Waldie said.

“We’re looking for some relief soon,” Waldie said. “A year from now we should be in pretty good shape.”