But He Can't Find Test Cheating?

Another hatchet-job from the Inspector General:

• The Chicago Police Department has failed to closely monitor its massive spending on officer overtime — a combined $575 million over the last six years — or take measures to prevent officers from abusing the system, an investigation by the city’s watchdog concluded.
  
  The report from the office of Inspector General Joseph Ferguson found that the lax oversight has allowed officers to use “potentially abusive practices” in piling up overtime — usually at time-and-a-half pay. The report released Tuesday said officers sometimes seek out work sure to lead to overtime, such as involving themselves in numerous drunken driving arrests and then going to court frequently for those cases. One officer cited in the report appeared in court nearly two-thirds of the 943 days examined, the inspector general wrote.

Would these be the DUI writers who win awards from MADD on a regular basis? Who have two and three traffic court keys? How is it their fault that Cook County Courts allow endless "continuances" month after month after month? What is Foxxx's office supposed to do - not subpoena the primary witness to a drunk driver? This allegation is bullshit unless Cook County and Rahm are suddenly supporting driving drunk?

Speaking of Court overtime, is the D-unit still forcing detectives to pass shootings along from watch to watch? Such as someone gets shot at 2000 hours, detectives respond, the watch changes and the detectives are required to pass the ongoing investigation to First Watch? That was a hallmark of the Weis era - except when the case went to court, the State had to subpoena detectives from multiple watches to run a case. That had to cost millions.

And as pointed out here on numerous occasions, the Cubs debacle of paying every single officer on two watches a minimum of 4 hours OT (with the 12 hour shifts) along with cancelled days off for non-clinching days with the Cubs out of town. What was the total for that playoff run? And the parade, too?

This was an amusing bit of the "reporting:"

• The report found that the city paid out millions of dollars to officers who did not have proper approval for overtime, and even to officers who approved their own overtime payments. The audit focused on “regular duty” overtime — payouts for going to court or staffing special events, among other things — and found that the department recorded no specific reason why overtime was necessary in 99 percent of the payouts, despite a policy that officers must give reasons for overtime.

Whoa - we could authorize our own overtime? Why weren't we informed of this? We could have had the roof re-shingled.

• The inspector general criticized the Police Department for tracking the bulk of its overtime through a cumbersome pen-and-paper system that requires the support staff to make entries manually.

At least there's a paper-trail for indictments then.

Here's the dangerous part:

• Beyond the financial impact of the department’s reliance on overtime, the report raised concerns that some officers may be reporting to work fatigued from long hours at a stressful job. In addition to allowing some officers to work frequent overtime, Ferguson noted, officers also do not have to tell the department about second jobs.

If you want to pay us 24-7 and triple our salary, no problem. But until that happens, stay out of our off-duty business.

This is such an obvious hit job and an attack on parts of the Contract that Rahm wants the FOP to cave-in on. Here's a bright idea - how about you don't balance your budget on the elimination of nearly 2,000 salaried officer spots, hire a New York carpetbagger who made his bones on a "more-with-less" philosophy and then feign ignorance as to why overtime went through the roof?

Here are the Sun Times and DNAinfo reports to compare.

UPDATE: Is OEMC overtime counted in the Police budget? Someone pointed out that OEMC is regularly holding over 10-to-20 dispatchers/call takers every single day this past summer. That's why you always see OEMC personnel at the time of the OT lists the media publishes.