Anaheim police union leaders rack up six figures from Disney overtime assignments
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Hefty overtime pay collected by a pair of Anaheim Police Assn. leaders assigned to patrol the Disneyland Resort area helped make them among the highest-paid officers in the city.
But the extra hours also prompted an internal review by Anaheim Police Department command staff and one supervising officer asserting that he lost a significant amount of overtime after being transferred out of the coveted theme park area.
During his time as union vice president, Tony Lee, a sergeant who supervised about a dozen Anaheim Resort Policing Team officers, more than doubled his base salary in 2024 with roughly $245,000 in overtime pay, city records show.
Lee’s regular and overtime pay, according to his timesheets, totaled about $400,000 that year — a sum that even exceeded the base salary of Anaheim’s police chief and city manager at the time.
In addition, the association’s president, Jose Duran, drew nearly $270,000 from full-time and overtime hours in 2024. His timesheet shows at least one 24-hour workday.
Under contract, Disney reimburses the city for exclusive use of its officers who patrol resort properties outside of Disneyland and California Adventure. The exact amount Disney paid the city in 2024 could not be confirmed but in previous years the amount was well into the millions.
Anaheim Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava’s push for a gate tax ballot measure failed to persuade her colleagues.
The 2024 overtime prompted then-Police Chief Rick Armendariz to order a review.
Command staff found evidence of “potential overtime misuse,” according to a recent tort claim filed by Capt. Lorenzo Glenn, who helped comb the records.
In May, Lee filed a legal claim — a precursor to a lawsuit — with the city, alleging his overtime hours were reduced last year in retaliation for refusing a Disney order to oversee what he asserted were “arrest quotas.”
The controversy rested quietly in the backdrop of a public policy spat that arose in October over a proposed 3% gate tax ballot measure, which was projected to bring between $83 million and $134 million a year in new general fund revenue.
In an Oct. 28 policy briefing, Anaheim Councilmember Natalie Rubalcava told city employee union leaders, including Duran, that “Disney’s president let city staff know Disney will stop development presumably as a punishment if this initiative were approved by council to go to the voters.”
Disneyland officials said they have no record supporting Rubalcava’s allegations.
Lee supported Rubalcava’s push to have Anaheim voters weigh in on the Disney ticket tax proposal to help close a projected $63-million city budget shortfall on behalf of what he described as a worn-thin workforce.
“We’re dedicating a staggering portion of our staff into the resort area,” he said during the Oct. 28 council meeting. “Anaheim police officers willingly make sacrifices to keep this city safe. But when an understaffed department must continuously cover resort demands through mandatory overtime, those sacrifices multiply.”
The Police Department reported that it had a record 430 sworn positions last year — up from 408 five years prior. Union leadership, however, has argued that staffing levels remain insufficient in Orange County’s most populous city and that overtime is required to compensate, particularly in the bustling Resort District.
Lee claimed that Anaheim police officers worked more than 90,000 hours at the Disneyland Resort in 2024. He personally logged almost 2,000 overtime hours that year — an average of about 37.5 hours a week on top of his regular, 40-hour schedule.
Disney, according to the claim, allegedly pressured Lee through the command staff to curb overtime for officers not meeting the alleged arrest quotas.
Disneyland officials denied the existence of arrest quotas and noted that officers are under the command of the APD, not the resort.
Anaheim city spokesperson Mike Lyster declined to answer questions about the overtime controversy and whether the city followed up on the internal review.
“Out of respect for all involved, we won’t be engaging at this level of detail on matters of staffing, scheduling, operations and personnel,” he said.
He also declined to provide how much Disney spends reimbursing the city for police overtime.
Police officers logging substantial overtime hours is not a new issue in California, but reports of extra work leading to enormous pay have recently resurfaced.
An Oakland Police lieutenant made $711,000 in 2024 with nearly a half-million of that sum coming from overtime, according to Oaklandside. The city of San Diego and Santa Barbara County have reckoned with the issue in the face of bulging payrolls.
In Anaheim, Disney is a key stakeholder in police overtime pay. Its contract with the city lays out a standard 40-hour workweek for officers in the resort area, but recognizes the need for a fluctuating schedule.
Concerning pay, Anaheim provides Disney with a monthly invoice detailing the days and hours, including overtime, worked by the Resort Policing Team. Disney holds the right to question Anaheim about “unclear or disputed” invoices and can request a reassignment of officers in writing — at the police chief’s discretion.
According to timesheets obtained by TimesOC, Lee racked up 195 overtime hours in August 2024 — the most for any single month reviewed — in addition to 152 full-time hours. He worked an average of 87 hours a week with seven days off, a schedule that paid nearly $36,000 that month alone.
In April, Lee worked 170 hours over 14 consecutive days, according to city records. “Absent emergency operations,” the department limits hours worked to 16 hours in one day, 30 hours in a two-day period and 84 hours in a week. Lee’s timesheets appear to routinely exceed the two-day limit and, on occasion, surpass the weekly cap.
Lee also logged a handful of part-time hours on several occasions followed by substantial overtime in a single day. He reported working just two full-time hours and 14 overtime hours on June 9, 2024, a 16-hour day that paid him almost $1,900.
On June 21, 2024, Duran reported having worked 10 hours full-time and 14 overtime hours, a shift that accounted for all hours in a day. On four more occasions between 2024 and 2025, his regular and overtime shifts appeared to exceed the 16-hour daily cap.
In April that year, Duran racked up 150 hours of overtime paying $15,153.76.
Duran and Lee, who resigned as vice president last month, did not respond to requests for comment, nor did another union leader who was asked to speak on their behalf.
Nevertheless, officers can only work overtime if its approved by a supervisor. The police union contract in place at the time states that “all overtime must be authorized by the appropriate division head,” meaning officers cannot just decide independently that they are working more.
An Anaheim Police Department spokesperson did not respond to questions about who signed off on the Resort Policing Team’s hours or how much it cost.
According to Glenn’s claim, Armendariz tasked him and Lt. Shane Carringer with evaluating the team due to a trio of concerns, including “overtime practices.”
It’s unclear whether the review stemmed from any Disney invoice dispute.
The command staff officers concluded that “potential overtime misuse,” including but not limited to Lee and Duran, “resulted in hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime compensation.”
Carringer and Glenn, according to the claim, asserted that there were irregularities surrounding overtime assignments and reporting practices that could signal “timesheet manipulation.”
What those irregularities, if any, were remains unclear. Carringer could not be reached for comment. Glenn and his attorney declined to speak publicly about the claim.
In Lee’s claim — which makes no mention of the internal review — he positioned himself as a victim of retaliation that unjustly “halved” his take home pay — a reference to the loss of overtime.
Lee, who first became Resort Policing Team supervisor in 2022, described his promotion as one that is “a lifelong appointment, highly sought after within the department and greatly increases an officer’s earning potential as it grants preferential access to overtime while working at the Disney Resort.”
But the following year, Lee alleges in his claim, Mike Chocek, a Disney senior manager and former Fullerton police lieutenant, complained to him about officers not arresting park visitors after finding banned items during screenings.
Lee deemed the “zero tolerance” request as an illegal arrest quota and alleged that Carringer instructed him to limit overtime hours for under-performing officers. By May 2025, the relationship between Lee and Carringer soured, according to the claim, as Lee refused to discipline officers.
On Dec. 2, the APD transferred Lee from his role supervising the Resort Policing Team weeks after the gate tax failed to get on the ballot.
Lee alleged that his “earning potential suffered dramatically,” as he was banned from working overtime and not allowed on resort property, except for emergencies.
Lee’s attorneys do not have a final calculation of his alleged damages from the reassignment and overtime ban, but note in the claim that it exceeds $25,000.
Timesheet records show no December overtime hours for Lee.
By then, Lee’s overtime pay declined substantially in 2025. He collected $137,000 through 11 months. Duran earned slightly more in overtime last year than in 2024.
In his claim, Glenn alleged that the police union retaliated against him after his preliminary review found “significant anomalies” that resulted in “excessive overtime payouts.”
City officials redacted details about the alleged retaliation, but Glenn asserted that former City Manager Jim Vanderpool was “aware of and involved in the wrongful conduct.”
Vanderpool did not respond to requests for comment.
Jim Vanderpool’s resignation as city manager followed a closed session meeting where Anaheim City Council did not opt to fire him. The FPPC is currently investigating Vanderpool for a chamber-paid trip he took in 2020 but did not report as a gift.
Armendariz retired as police chief in August, but stayed on in an interim role through the end of the year. In December, councilmembers hired Police Chief Manuel Cid with an annual salary of $435,000, an appointment hailed by the union.
Earlier that month, a union leadership assessment included comments from rank-and-file members who wanted a chief that wouldn’t put “Disney before the department.”
It also criticized some command staff, including Glenn, who is Black, and got “poor” rankings for killing morale, having a “progressive agenda,” being “too focused on DEI” and catering to Disney executives.
Around the same time, Glenn alleged that a video circulated in retaliation against the overtime review showed command staff being pelted by a paintball gun. Independently obtained, the video depicts a doctored scene from the TV series “Entourage” where a lead character labeled as Chief Cid pelted targets, including characters labeled Glenn and Carringer.
City officials knew about the video and other alleged harassment but a human resources complaint went nowhere, Glenn claimed.
“The city failed to take corrective or preventative action,” the claim read.
Cid did not respond to questions about what actions he took on the internal overtime review or the video allegedly circulated in retaliation.
