Sacramento grapples with $44M budget deficit as police overtime soars | Opinion

As Sacramento stares down the barrel of a $44 million budget deficit, there’s one department the city refuses to hold accountable: the Sacramento Police Department.

Year after year, the police department bleeds taxpayer dollars through lawsuit settlements and bloated overtime under the guise of public safety, while leaving our communities with less transparency, trust and actual safety. Sacramento’s police department routinely racks up more than $15 million in overtime spending annually — money pulled directly from vacant positions that were never filled, used instead to line the pockets of a select few officers.

Last year, city staff admitted in public records that there is no meaningful oversight of overtime practices within the police department. Despite repeated alarms sounded over the years, the system remains broken. There is no written policy justifying the “mandatory minimum staffing” excuse the department uses to justify endless overtime, no safeguards to stop abuse and no accountability for the officers routinely doubling their salaries on the backs of Sacramento’s working people.

City priorities

In April, the city council had the opportunity to demand transparency by auditing the Sacramento Police Department’s overtime spending. They refused.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t about public safety, it’s about protecting a system prioritizing padding police paychecks over serving the people. Transparent California data reveals that dozens of Sacramento officers have overtime pay exceeding 100% of their base salaries for multiple years. According to data gathered by Transparent California via public records requests, one Sacramento officer received over $475,000 in overtime on top of his base salary since 2019, comprising over $925,000 in total pay; several others have taken home over a million dollars in combined pay and benefits from 2012 to 2023.

This isn’t just irresponsible, it’s obscene.

It’s only getting worse: While departments across the city are being asked to make painful cuts, the Sacramento Police Department is set to see its budget increase to $254 million. Programs supporting housing, youth services, arts and culture, public infrastructure maintenance and violence prevention are on the chopping block. Yet the police department — the city’s largest department with 194 vacant positions and sky-high pay rates — was asked to cut just 27 positions this year (by comparison, 57 positions were cut from Youth, Parks and Community Enrichment).

How did we get here?

Let’s follow the money: Since 2014, the Sacramento Police Department’s labor associations have funneled over $96,000 in campaign contributions to a majority of sitting city council members, with $38,000 going to Mayor Kevin McCarty alone.

It’s no coincidence that the department’s overtime abuse exploded the same year former City Manager Howard Chan took office. In 2017, the police department’s overtime spending began its steady climb, with 81% of the department’s total overtime spending since 2012 occurring in just the past seven years, over $127 million. (These numbers appeared in the Sacramento Community Police Review Commission’s annual report and recommendations for 2024).

Public support from Sacramento Police Department brass was prominent during last year’s negotiations to extend Chan’s contract. The city manager has the final say in union negotiations, and with the department’s union seeking to renew its contract, having the highest-paid city manager in your pocket is a strategic asset. Even under new leadership, the deck is stacked — and now they’re cashing in.

What are we paying for?

This is a department that takes more and gives less. According to a city-commissioned analysis, the Sacramento Police Department spends the overwhelming majority of its time on non-criminal matters. According to my research on crime and clearance data reported to the FBI and posted by the California Department of Justice’s Open Justice Data Explorer for Crimes and Clearances, the Sacramento Police Department’s overall crime arrests are as low as 13%, with violent crime arrests being less than 40%.

Additionally, according to the Open Justice Data Explorer, less than 10% of its calls for service are related to violent crime, while its crime-solving has steadily declined alongside the overall crime rate. Yet every year, it demands more money, more personnel, more power, and has received over $100 million in new funding and 78 new positions over the last five years.

It’s time we ask: What are we actually paying for?

Sacramento deserves a city budget that reflects our values. That means investing in housing, health, education, parks and youth services — all of which create real community safety. While we reward police officers with record-setting budgets and runaway overtime for a model of policing that continues to fail us, city leaders are considering budget reduction strategies that would cut over $2.5 million to park maintenance, neighborhood improvements and youth programming. We’re even entertaining the idea of charging unhoused seniors for the right to use public shelters.

The Sacramento City Council must immediately freeze the Sacramento Police Department’s overtime spending, investigate overtime abuses and begin redirecting funds into services that actually keep us safe.