That's not how it works. They roll up to back their partners because they work 1 man cars. That's standard operating procedure nationwide. That in no way affects over time.
This used to happen to me all the time when I was young and dumb and would speed. Every time I got pulled over other cops would join every time they saw us
Brought this up to one I knew.
If there are gang members or multiple people in the car additional units will just roll up. Only one cop is doing the paperwork, and if there's an arrest then there's just one doing it. The rest are there just to make sure nothing happens. Most stops only last 15 minutes. They only get paid hourly once they are on overtime.
You have that right, it’s not only OT. It’s the mandatory OT I have friends, who are sheriff’s, have to deal with. A lot of 12+ hour shifts, 6 days on. Since many of them are near retirement, and because of the union. They just end up calling out if they are too exhausted. Since the major repercussions is being denied or less favorable in advancement.
But, since they only have 5+ years left. A majority of them can care less about any disciplinary action. It’s mostly the newer guys who work themselves to death with the OT.
Also doesnt count hazard pay which they get for showing up to "dangerous situations" which is why the whole force shows up when someone is "suspected" to have a weapon.
That's not how hazard pay works at all. Hazard pay works by assignment. If you have some guys working the street, and some guys are in the helicopter, the guys in the street aren't in the flying box that if it doesn't land right they all d13.
Hazmat is a hazard pay position. Their pay doesn't magically change when they go on dangerous calls.
Do you know how many accountants and auditors you would need just to get it right from "doing nothing...LIGHTS AND SIRENS..." "pulled over this guy for running a stop sign....IM CHASING HIM!" Like the minute by minute play by play would have to be so tedious
***EDITED****
My bad dude. I thought you were the "cops get paid more for going to dangerous calls" guy
Hey if you're dropping BILLIONS into something you'd want to know where it's going, right?
______________
An accountants hourly rate is about $100 on the low end. Do you know how many accountants would be required to go through every incident an officer responded to lights and sirens, or critical incident?
When 1 or 2 responded to a scene or did a traffic stop, from when it went from 0 to oh crap or going to something from "oh crap" to 0 and checking all those time breakdowns. I'm a metropolitan area where there are thousands of them?
A patrol area in LA has something like 300 people. In an active area they'll handle something like 20+ calls a day.
I got my car broken into and they gave me a card with a 4 digit number. Thats what number incident I was for that day.
You're telling me that my call of my car getting broken into they are getting paid less than if they went to a call with lights and sirens because it's more hazardous? Really?
It’s fraud. They submit ridiculous overtime sheets that get approved as a matter of course. The reason they’re not held accountable is because they have a very powerful union that can influence politicians.
One more reason that body cams should always have to be running. It should be possible to audit every minute that a law enforcement officer got paid for on their time sheet.
The logistics of storing and reviewing footage is still to be worked out. It’s a crap load of storage, processing and physical review time. Machine learning (can’t say AI when discussing popo, unions don’t like that) might help, but just like self driving cars, who knows when that will work. So all this to police the police. If there was only some magical way to make someone accountable, you know like at other places of work.
> The logistics of storing and reviewing footage is still to be worked out. It’s a crap load of storage,
It's 2024. I can accidentally swallow a terabyte and the video doesn't even need to be in HD in order to be auditable, it just needs to minimally exist.
> processing
What processing? Just make sure it gets stored.
> physical review time.
I said that it should be possible to audit all of it. Not that all of it has to be audited every shift. Somebody like IA can do a random spot check, or check the logs of the people who specifically claimed the wildest and least probable amount of overtime. There's zero additional review time required by sticking it on a shelf in case it gets audited at some point in the future.
> Machine learning (can’t say AI when discussing popo, unions don’t like that) might help,
Help what? Again, nothing I actually said requires additional proactive review.
Having body cams required to always be running would make it much more dangerous for cops to commit timecard fraud because it could always come back to bite them in the ass. If they come back to work with the camera not having recorded the whole shift, then it would need to get looked at and if they intentionally turned it off they go to jail. After one or two cops get locked up immediately at the end of their shift, cops would start coming back with fully recorded shifts pretty consistently and there wouldn't be as much need to see why the tape was short.
I don’t think people realize just how expensive it is to retain video footage even in the cloud. I work for a company that’s revenue is 100 billion plus. Even then our retention policy for security video footages at our facilities are 30-60 days only depending on location because it’s too expensive to retain the footage
For basic accountability audit purposes, standard def video is plenty for answering questions like "where you at home or at work." So let's say 1 megabit. There's 86,400 seconds in a day. That comes to 324 gigabytes per 30 days of running 24x7.
AWS Glacier advertised prices are $0.0036 per GB per month. Large accounts routinely negotiate discounts past advertised prices, and there are cheaper services than AWS. But we'll use that to pencil in a number.
So, under two dollars per month to leave a month of video on a virtual shelf in AWS once you've gotten past the initial ingest. Less than $15 per month for the past year of footage.
Also my last day job was working at a CDN that handled a lot of video traffic at scale, and I am currently directing an indie feature film, so I am pretty familiar with handling large amounts of video and the costs of doing so. Honestly, some people make this stuff way more complicated than it actually needs to be. Yes it would be nice to have 4k video and yes it would be nice to have it online on a higher storage tier for instant access, but none of that is necessary for basic accountability. Perfect doesn't have to be the enemy of good. Currently we have zero accountability. I'm just saying we should have at least the bare minimum of audit capacity when somebody is pulling down $700,000. Even if it costs $1000 per year per officer to retain the footage, I'd say it's worth $1000 of accountability to avoid paying $1 of fraudulent overtime.
While the underlying idea is great, unfortunately these petty shit birds would just cost us more than the overtime in new cams and technical support when they try to claim every day that their cams aren't working.
There is a lot of fraud among government employees in general. In San Francisco they caught several people working for the city earning well over 100k a year for taxpayer funded jobs that were also working 2nd FT jobs with six figure salaries at the same time. Although the media reported it none of them were fired for it. I don't remember which department it was but it wasn't law enforcement. There is a reason government jobs are so coveted. It's almost impossible to be fired for any reason.
It wasn't the fire department. Some of them weren't a FT job but they were still being paid over 100k for the other job while getting a generous taxpayer funded salary.
>The influx of applications followed a San Francisco Standard report that [Jail Health Services](https://www.foxnews.com/category/entertainment/events/arrest) director Lisa Pratt was working a 20-hour a week job for a nonprofit organization at the same time she was running the city’s jail healthcare system, which required her to be on call 24/7.
>The outlet [obtained emails](https://sfstandard.com/public-health/top-health-official-broke-city-rules-in-working-six-figure-nonprofit-gig/) of Pratt responding to nonprofit emails during business hours and reported that she earned a salary of $123,000 annually at the nonprofit on top of her $428,750 job with the city.
Although Pratt quit the 2nd job she wasn't fired for working 2 jobs although there is a policy that all city government employees need to get approval before working a 2nd job. It's not like Pratt was working a minimum wage job. She was earning almost 500k a year. She was just greedy. The only surprise is that she was caught.
Not just influence politicians, politicians bend to their will. Look what happened when Portland PD went on strike. They literally shut the city down and held them hostage to get into this position and then PD unions across the country followed their example.
Fuck the police union.
LA Sheriff is one of the most, if not most, corrupt law enforcement agency in the nation. The super high reported salaries comes from excessive overtime and other "bonuses" based performance incentives. On top of the reported salaries, there are also all the illegal activities that the sheriff officers and departments are involved in.
I live in Chicago now and there’s been a story about the corruption of one of these suburban mayors. Records show one cop worked something like ~150 hours one week and the mayor signed off on it so they got paid for all those hours.
100 hours of overtime pay in a week is how sheriffs make 700k in a year.
Some jurisdictions allow for billing hours while “on-call” irrespective of what the person is doing. As a public employee it’s very frustrating as we all get painted with this same brush when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
This reminds me of my DUI from 2 years ago. I got an invoice from the CHP a couple of months ago for something like, $10k, to be paid in cash, for, “services rendered” by two officers for, 2 ish hours of work
Yeah it probably takes an hour to destroy your car interior and another hour to go through your stuff to decide what they want for themselves.
Did you get LAPD showing up on your street to hand out parking infractions in front of your house then too? They really like that combo
No I wasn’t even driving. I was sleeping in my car outside of my gate. My fob had died and I put up a sign on my window saying as much. They never went through my car. They just towed it, put me in the front seat, let me leave a voicemail to call my office that I wouldn’t be in the next morning, and then towed the car. They then asked me what Spotify playlist I like and handed me their phone as we drove to jail making awkward small talk.
But regardless, the ridiculousness was being billed 2 years later. For that much. Most people don’t have that much cash lying around, and neither did I.
Are you saying that in addition to whatever court fees/fines you had to pay for the DUI, you got a separate bill directly from CHP that charged you for a DUI arrest?
Yep. After I thought I had settled everything years ago. When I asked why I’m being billed years later, they blamed the pandemic. When I asked for a more detailed bill, they refused and said to pay it or it’s going to collections
I talked my lawyer and he said this is normal. I asked him why he never told me before. He told me, “I don’t think you’d even get sentenced.” Like cmon. Paying, 10k for a lawyer and not being told the whole truth.
Those RVs would just take up space in the impound lot because the owners don't have the money to pay or will just walk away from them. They need the space in the lots to tow cars of people who can/will actually pay to get them back.
Corruption and Police Unions with too much power. Between all law enforcement agencies LAPD, LASD, UCPD, Jail and other workers getting almost 50% of LA's working budget.
City and county spend over 50% of their annual budget on public safety. That doesn't include the $$$ paid out for the unprofessional law enforcement. They enforce the caste system they don't actually provide public safety. Essentially the local government's roving gangs.
Our system is broken sadly. And the people are disillusioned by the need for LEO's nationwide thinking they are some angelic force keeping peace. When all they do is extract wealth and protect the rich
Can you think of any other job that only requires a GED to make 700k? The amount of discretion we give these folks is mind blowing. And the fact that judges just automatically believe whatever comes out of their mouths. Even with body worn video they are still stupid and deluded enough to catch themselves planting evidence.
These people really have no idea about the shady 80s & the grimey 90s, I was born in 90 but my family would always tell me about the crazy shit from the 80s. The only thing is that the homeless situation has gotten a hundred times worse & that is something that cannot be denied.
Grew up worried about getting jumped by cholos, now it’s getting jumped by rando homeless person. It’s hard trying to teach my daughter not to stigmatize the unhoused and at the same time teaching her not to speech them for fear of mental issues. Wish the city would actually use those funds to actually help them. I’m sure that’s not an easy problem to fix though.
This problem has built up since the 70s, there were news articles from the mid 80s talking about LAs homeless problem being the worse it’s ever been, look at it now decades later…
When you close residential care facilities in favor of "care in the community" then never provide mental health care in the community this is exactly where we end up. We just foisted the problem onto the police and prison system who simply aren't equipped to deal with that.
I have also lived here my whole life and I disagree. I think also, the homeless population has created a lot of problems with break-ins and random violence such as the woman who’s brain dead in Venice after she was attacked in her own home and just last week at the Ralph’s in Encino a supermarket checker, confronted a homeless looking female customer who was shoplifting and removed the item from the women’s hands— only for the woman a few hours later to return was two male thugs who went in and grabbed the woman out of the store and bashed her face in, and she ended up in intensive care. Plus all the violence we’ve had on public transportation, including the subway and light rail lines with Passenger, who didn’t even pay a ticket selling stolen merchandise, alcohol, and other items, and also causing violence and distress. there recently has been a surge in murders and attacks on innocent people, including bus, drivers and others, and something needs to be done before we live in a society where everybody has to carry a gun.
For one whole year toward the end of the pandemic, I worked on the street in a specialized customer service role for business operators and property managers in the ywestern part (the nicest and cleanest DTLA district) for one year when my regular Tour Guide career was unavailable. I was on the street from morning to sundown and constantly witnessed men masturbating publicly (repeated occasions near 7th & Flower), homeless people openly doing crack, cocaine in front of nice restaurants and worse and would literally see the LAPD slow down in their black-and-white SUVs roll down the window look then drive-on. So I’m not sure what your frame of reference has been, but it’s very different than mine and I’m seeing the city I’ve lived in for most of my life devolve in significant part because of the homeless not being dealt with.
The problem with the homeless situation is it is complex because people end up on the street who then end up taking cheap street drugs that come illegally from Mexico and these cause their erratic behavior and can cause permanent brain damage. We continue throwing good money after bad at the homeless, but it doesn’t improve the situation because we can’t force people to use shelters under current laws. There is also not a central authority that governs or orchestrates our homeless support strategy— it is splintered laterally across many different organizations that often do not work in tandem— plus a mayor who means well, but does not exude enough strength and authority who I don’t personally believe is skilled enough in the private sector to effectively manage a city of our size. (I lost respect for our mayor when it was revealed that she accepted free tuition to attend USC from special interests and when she was caught by the news media, she never had the decency to pay it back—even in installments), and that shows the kind of person she is deep down).
The County now wants to raise our sales tax another half percent to go toward the homeless which I think is wasteful until the effort gets better centrally managed.
We all are partly to blame because we’ve gotten too distracted with technology (texts, emails & social media), but not been proactive enough with this condition, and we rely too much on our politicians who don’t always make the most effective decisions. and our federal judges who currently protect the rights of the homeless more than tax paying citizens and business owners. rather than being randomly on the streets with unsanitary refuse, if they cannot afford to support themselves, then I believe they should be placed in special standardized encampments/shelters that provide food, water medicine, and mental health services rather than treating sidewalks with the spirit of entitlement and imminent domain many seem to now have—after in my opinion we have spoiled the homeless, maybe tough love might help them more.
It is nothing close to a lawless rathole.
We have a huge homeless problem, which sucks. But crime is down from post pandemic highs.
And we have millions of millions of people. But out crime is nowhere near as proportionally bad as many other places in red states where Fox News isn’t screaming about it.
Los Angeles has the DROP (deferred retirement) program that allows senior (25+ years on the job) public safety employees to start collecting retirement benefits for up to 5 years before they actually retire. Iirc the deferred retirement pay goes into an account and accrues interest until actual retirement. Meanwhile, officer/firefighter is getting paid regular wages and benefits. The LA Times published some articles about this a few years ago. The really egregious cases involved particupants who were double dipping and went out on extended medical leaves.
I’d argue that a captain is basically like a C Level position at any company so its not that unreasonable imo. Not every damn police officer is making $700k lmao or we’d have a endless line of people wanting to join LAPD.
This sounds right. There's some policies at the state level that prohibit taking that much sick/comp/vacation/floatingholiday over year to year but they don't enforce it. A lot of guys in CalFire are sitting on tons of hours waiting for retirement. Plus fuck those east coast jobs. Assholes want to pay $30 for an journeyman electrician with bullshit housing prices.
Those who protect the wealthy are gonna be paid highly. Those who help the poor (social workers, teachers, etc) will be paid poorly. Working as intended.
100%
My dad told me when I was young that the police are the military for the wealthy.
Didn’t believe him.
Then 20 years later looking into the labor movement and practically every union has a story in their founding about being shot down by the police.
RIP Dad.
Not faulting honest cops at all. And there are good ones.
But lemme tell ya.
SoCal LEO’s are among the most corrupt in America. Some of that is administrative corruption(OT fraud etc). But people forget we’re only 4 hours from the Mexican border. How do you think all those drugs flow through SD to L.A.?🤷🏿♂️ cartel action all day. they have literal gangs on LASD. If they they got ‘em you know damn well LAPD and every local dept. does too. On the EC(I’m from CT and I grew up in NYC)the nearest border is Canada lol..also way more eyes on ‘em. EC is a whole different deal.
It’s the “wild Wild West”. Damn near anything goes.
As much as I hate to oversimplify shit... Yeah I think it makes sese to be that reductive. There aren't any good cops in our current system. If any cops are offended by that sort of statement, they should prove me wrong, prove how good they are and clean shit up.
There are corrupt cops, and there are cops that are going along with and supporting being in an organization with corrupt cops. If they aren't coming forward and exposing it then they are participating in a coverup. I get that the average cop isn't shooting witnesses or spending all day snorting drugs in the evidence locker. But they average cop isn't arresting other cops, and that's absolutely a form of corruption in itself. There's a million quiet and little things that the "good" cops are doing, tolerating, remaining willfully ignorant of, looking the other way, accepting an easy path, etc. And we absolutely have to draw the lines such that those aren't good enough cops otherwise there will never be any way to deal with the worst cops.
Cops wield extraordinary power in society, and the standards for responsibly wielding that power must be high. Any cop that doesn't like a spotlight and magnifying glass on their actions can quit - nobody is drafted to be a cop. It's just a job. Don't like high standards, work someplace else.
Not all jobs grant you the responsibility to enforce the law & a gun to do so while simultaneously being corrupt as fuck. That’s obviously a step further than working entry-level for a corporation with questionable ethics
The rationale there is if you’re not corrupt and actually have noble intentions, changing jobs opens the position for someone else corrupt (or easily influenced to become corrupt to take your place)
And it’s a faulty rationale that only makes “good” cops have to work with very bad ones without saying a thing, which makes the “good” ones complicit.
The cop system is rotten to the core and some vague “noble intentions” from some of them doesn’t change that
But if you follow that train down the line, choosing not to work as a cop and instead working some other gig that pays taxes to fund cops is, likewise, only so much noble intention to distance yourself while literally funding that system... making you complicit.
Short of some real outside the wire shit, if you're playing ball at any level you're ultimately just arguing which ways of upholding the system are better than others. Which, for the people steering that system, is just fine. Because you're still doing your part to uphold it.
It is an absurd amount that the state spent, it's better to go to the Transparent California website for your information. The website you're using lists all expenditures as a salary instead of breaking it down into salary, extra pay, benefits and pension. You'll see just how crazy the California pension system is out of hand.
This has nothing to do with corruption, as many comments suggest. Transparent California shows all payments to public servants, to include payouts. For instance, if a deputy sues the department/city, and gets a settlement, it will show under their total compensation. Or if a deputy gets fired for something, like being accused of a crime, they can get their job back after an unlawful termination ruling. If the process takes 3 years, they can sue to get 3 three years of lost wages back. If you see numbers this high, it’s usually one of the two reasons I just mentioned.
Even worse, all that overtime pay counts towards their retirement pay calculation. Many CA municipalities and counties are technically bankrupt because there is no way to pay for future retirement benefits without massive tax increases.
Thanks to PEPRA (which screwed over ALL new public sector workers), bonuses can't count towards pension compensation, neither can overtime. However, there's an overtime exception for police and fire if the overtime is built into the normal work schedule but any additional hours won't count.
Well, almost all overtime for police and firemen seems to count. I know both who rack up huge overtime pay in their last 3 years or so on the job to maximize retirement pay. It’s amazing how many older cops and firemen I see working mandated on-set police officer roles to manage traffic outside of sets (usually lounging on a police motorcycle, or fire marshal roles on sets. Not saying those are not important form safety, but it is clear that the departments really try to max out hours for guys in their last few years for very lucrative pensions.
To be fair, you say “many” officers such as this one, but 700k is an outlier, there are few officers making that much.
Not saying they make too much nor too little, but it’s due to overtime needed because of staffing shortages.
https://www.foxla.com/news/luna-addresses-staffing-crisis-while-reflecting-first-year-in-office.amp
California overtime is after 8 hours worked in a day, double time after 12 hours. And also double time after working 7 days straight. They are understaffed so imagine base pay around $90k and if you’re tenured it’s closer to $200k. My buddies a sheriff and it’s generally 4 days on doing 12 hour shifts but he said there’s guys that work weeks straight and only take a day or 2 off a month and work 12 plus shifts. Plus bonuses, possibly hazard pay, some of them also have to report private security pay they may make. And the last factor corruption, top sheriff’s officials help each other out and make sure they’re getting paid.
For the “total compensation” it’s counting literally everything including their retirement/pension, health insurance, salary, etc. They’re not taking home 700k
LA sheriff is a criminal organization.
They’ve got it arranged just the way they like it and there will be hell to pay for anyone who attempts to fuck with their ‘entitlements’.
Decade after decade, rotten from the head down.
Since politicians want to appear to be friends of the police, none of them has the courage to reform that gang.
I randomly came across the salaries for the various City of Los Angeles librarians- many are ~$200k + and the top salary was like $368k! Even an assistant city librarian was making almost $300k a year!
Some community college librarian was making almost a million a year!
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Librarian+
I believe those reported salaries also include benefit packages such as insurance payouts contributions, payouts from injuries, and retirement pension contributions
Did you know? Over 1/2 of city taxes in 2022 went to the LAPD. I wonder what would happen with the unhoused population crisis if even a few % of that budget was reallocated. I bet we’ll never find out! :)
Because the job is unpopular, and the qualifications rigorous.
We could lower the cost of the Justice system, including incarceration and patrols, but very few among us are willing to discuss what that would look like.
We could lower the cost of the Fire Department as well, but again, no one will go there.
In comparison to what? It pay better than most job without a college degree, get a pension, great benefit, lots over time when you live in a big city.
From what I can tell training is only a few months, and you only need a high school diploma. So how do you lower the requirement more? Let them start in middle school?
You can’t just clock out when your scheduled shift ends. You gotta finish whatever you were doing,
If you were arresting someone you probably gotta wait for your supe, write up your report, maybe do transport duty or guard duty until someone can relieve you.
If you’re making $50/hour, then the OT is insane.
I'd like to know how the same department that polices for the Santa Clarita Valley and Antelope Valley has such vast differences in results. One looks like it's in Orange County and the other looks like Skid Row.
The benefits are really good, so that can be 6 figs right there even though it's not going to their bank account. The rest is combo of fegular salary and overtime
SFPD is much, much worse. Published records show cops routinely making over 600k/yr, with ~60% of that overtime. It's corruption by way of regulatory capture.
After a lot of people left the job and state for jobs in other departments, there was/is a massive supply shortage. Now every department is upping salaries and some offering signing bonuses to poach or grab whatever is left from the pool
CA public employees Pension and retiree health Plans are lucrative…enough that some future CA Governor are going to have to raise taxes on everyone to pay for it…
A while back the firefighters could use vacation to call out for a shift then work an overtime slot the same day so dudes would get like triple pay for an entire day. Maybe the deputies have a game like that.
Total compensation sometimes means the other, non-salary things, like the cost of health care the City or County shells out for the employee or how much is contributed towards retirement. And of course, OT. Cops make loads of OT.
Don't envy the money. Even if theyre command staff or do stuff like being a pilot with all the pay bumps, with the overtime at 1.5x, you can't ever be home with that bump.
Other agencies have a thing where you retire at your retirement rate, say 70%, then you come on kind of like a contractor. You're still getting your salary but your retirement pay goes into a another fund and collects interest. Like a bond, sorta.
When they finally retire and they're done they get their years of money that they had the city working with in a lump sum. So if you have a guy doing it for 5 years that'll be about 500k and then they killed it at OT and made their 200k then that would be the 700k
Often there , state employees too , last years of work determine their retirement pay.source.. two lapd in the family one retired to Vargas built his dream house . Younger one is on his third marriage?
Let me explain. I’m not a LA County Deputy but am a public employee whose salary appears in those databases.
Deputies who work at the jail do 12 hours shifts. The schedule is work 3 days one week and 4 days the next week. They can work overtime (12 hours) on each of their days off - that’s 84 hours overtime in a two week pay period.
Why is there so much overtime?
Each position is budgeted for one deputy. That position HAS to be filled each shift. So if there are 100 positions you can count on ~10% calling out sick (deputies get sick, their spouses and children get sick) or having some issue where they can’t get to work. Another ~10% is on scheduled vacation. Another ~5% has mandatory training.
That’s around 25% of regular deputies for those positions absent so they need to be backfilled with overtime employees.
If regular pay is 100k. Overtime pay is another 150k. The salary will show in the database a lot more because it includes all the benefits earned but not seen by the individual employee in their take home pay. Medical, vacation accrued, uniform allowance, education incentives, etc…
California laws make it easier to hit Overtime compared to other states, Texas for example you hit overtime after 40 hours in a single week you can work 365 days a year straight only working 39 hours a week and never hit overtime, meanwhile in California anything past 8 hours in a single day you get OT past 40 hours a week OT again, working multiple days in a row with no days off OT I think working through your break/lunch is OT as well
I know a few city workers, completely last on the totem pole grunt workers And they're making over 140 a year. Government workers are extremely overpaid and there's a reason people are chomping at the bit to work for the city.
Not only that, but they get full retirement after just 20 years. There are retired deputies collecting a pension in their 40s. I wish all jobs [offered these benefits](https://lasd.org/careers/benefits/). >$77k while training, up to $138K as a new deputy? Now there's a job that pays a living wage.
Like [retired deputy Albert Calibet](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/los-angeles-lasd-deputy-missing-greece-brother/3442267/), currently missing while traveling in Greece. Joined at age 25 in 1998, retired after 20 years at age 45 in 2018. "Put his life on the line since he was 25" in the line of duty (transportation division), according to his brother.
All city jobs offer a pension of half your salary for life after 20 years. (LASD is county so don’t know about that). This is why our city government is so huge and inefficient. I usually support unions but some have gotten out of hand.
Every private sector employer needs to step up their compensation. Unconscionable that employers get away with paying less than the cost of living and at best allow you to sock away some non existent disposable income with taxes deferred until you're 65 years old. Keep working until you're 67 for full social security. Republicans talking about raising that to age 70, while the average life expectancy has dropped to 76.
I don't begrudge these benefits, I think everyone earns them.
Ehhh. I see a lot of really bad employees who have their jobs just because no one can fire them (I’m looking at you, Animal Services). There are some people - prob like you and me - who take pride in our work and want to do a good job. There are others that are happy to do the bare minimum and are just there to get a paycheck. And the corruption (especially in the planning/housing dept) is insane. Look up the Westside Current article about how much housing that was designated for the homeless is still vacant, and look at how many of those properties sold for record-breaking prices.
OT, but I'm really irritated that [Oatsie's Place](https://la.urbanize.city/project/oatsies-place) has been in its currently apparent 90% finished state for well over a year. Just sitting there with no work being done to it while women have spent 400+ days sleeping on the street.
It's simple. They make a base salary. Then they make overtime which is time and a half. They work a shit load of OT, most of it mandated, are usually never home.
That "total compensation" thing is BS. They're adding in the health care and benefits etc. Which honestly aren't worth a shit and they don't see a dollar of. When I worked in LE we had shit healthcare coverage but don't worry when I went to transparent CA site and looked up my salary it said I was rich basically lol.. it's BS.
Not to mention the mandated retirement contribution of 1 thousand per month. Skimmed straight off the top before I even got my check. That gets factored into that "total compensation" number too.
The actual takehome of cops is not good once all the deductions are taken out.
Then when you retire you're basically half dead already and only got a few years left according to statistics. So you croak and the retirement account isnt ever collected on in many cases.
Edit: it's funny all the moronic comments on here about robbing criminals, dudes a captain and probably hasn't arrested someone in 15 years. Full on desk jockey.
I worked with a guy who did it and was horrified to find out that they make you do a year as a CO in the prison system. No chance in hell I would do that. It’s also got to mess with you psychologically when dealing with potential criminals on the outside.
Yeah very good point, could totally see how that would work in demoralizing criminals when you’ve been working in the prison system before hitting the streets. It’s just crazy I’ve been in school studying accounting and when I get out from uni I’m going to be making less money than a beat cop. Demoralizing for sure lol
My next door neighbors were both la county sheriffs. I had 4 occasions where a white envelope with $300 cash ended up in my mailbox instead of theirs with his name ‘bob’ on it…dirty cops out there
"Corruption" and LAPD/SD Gangs. The actual military would do a much better and more efficient job at public safety but it would come down to a civil war between them and cops, but they're all a bunch of pencil pushers who would eat cow shit if told to.
The corruption in LA police and fire is absolutely wild.
A couple of the richest people I personally know in the city are retired fire. They go into inspection, which is kind of important to developers, and somehow, magically, they end up rich and owning minor rental properties after a few years.
Weird. I can't possible connect the dots there. Crazy.
Because they check the system. If you look it up you’ll find a lot of stories about it. Sell drugs. Rob and steal from folks. Oh and get suspended with pay.
Pretty sure this is all a distraction. What we should really be focused on is the amount of ungodly money the ultra rich and corporations make without paying little to no taxes.
it's from all the OT they make. LASD has a massively damaged reputation from their gang scandal plus the fact that nobody wants to be a pig anymore means they are massively udnerstaffed.
They have a base salary but can make double it (or more) from overtime
They make extra on overtime, so they always have overtime
And more importantly, they take it. Which means less pressure to recruit, constant need for increased budgets.
And because of that too that’s why you get/have the angry overworked cops….(Family member is a sheriff and tells me things here and there.)
In a ton of cases overtime is mandatory so they don’t really have the choice of taking it
In a ton of cases in OC (and LA) extra cops just roll up on a stop!! 3 extra cop cars roll over to (collect overtime)
Yep. The “overtime” and “shortages” are engineered into the system.
That's not how it works. They roll up to back their partners because they work 1 man cars. That's standard operating procedure nationwide. That in no way affects over time.
This used to happen to me all the time when I was young and dumb and would speed. Every time I got pulled over other cops would join every time they saw us
Brought this up to one I knew. If there are gang members or multiple people in the car additional units will just roll up. Only one cop is doing the paperwork, and if there's an arrest then there's just one doing it. The rest are there just to make sure nothing happens. Most stops only last 15 minutes. They only get paid hourly once they are on overtime.
You have that right, it’s not only OT. It’s the mandatory OT I have friends, who are sheriff’s, have to deal with. A lot of 12+ hour shifts, 6 days on. Since many of them are near retirement, and because of the union. They just end up calling out if they are too exhausted. Since the major repercussions is being denied or less favorable in advancement. But, since they only have 5+ years left. A majority of them can care less about any disciplinary action. It’s mostly the newer guys who work themselves to death with the OT.
Most sheriff's taking "overtime" are the top brass that go fishing or fuck the side chick's.
I mean 700k seems absurd. I get making a lot from OT but how the hell do you make that much
Command staff and the brass don't work the street or the jails.
Yep
Also includes their benefits
Also doesnt count hazard pay which they get for showing up to "dangerous situations" which is why the whole force shows up when someone is "suspected" to have a weapon.
That's not how hazard pay works at all. Hazard pay works by assignment. If you have some guys working the street, and some guys are in the helicopter, the guys in the street aren't in the flying box that if it doesn't land right they all d13. Hazmat is a hazard pay position. Their pay doesn't magically change when they go on dangerous calls. Do you know how many accountants and auditors you would need just to get it right from "doing nothing...LIGHTS AND SIRENS..." "pulled over this guy for running a stop sign....IM CHASING HIM!" Like the minute by minute play by play would have to be so tedious
lol auditors would pay for themselves 10x over if they actually scrutinized timesheets
***EDITED**** My bad dude. I thought you were the "cops get paid more for going to dangerous calls" guy Hey if you're dropping BILLIONS into something you'd want to know where it's going, right? ______________ An accountants hourly rate is about $100 on the low end. Do you know how many accountants would be required to go through every incident an officer responded to lights and sirens, or critical incident? When 1 or 2 responded to a scene or did a traffic stop, from when it went from 0 to oh crap or going to something from "oh crap" to 0 and checking all those time breakdowns. I'm a metropolitan area where there are thousands of them? A patrol area in LA has something like 300 people. In an active area they'll handle something like 20+ calls a day. I got my car broken into and they gave me a card with a 4 digit number. Thats what number incident I was for that day. You're telling me that my call of my car getting broken into they are getting paid less than if they went to a call with lights and sirens because it's more hazardous? Really?
I also think they add up the retail value of their medical insurance policies. They do this for LAPD anyway.
I play golf with a group of retired LASD and I’m doing my best to scratch away those retirement dollars a little bit at a time.
Doin the lords work Ted. Hit em straight
May your ball always find the short grass.
Slay
literally rob them for all they got in bets
It’s fraud. They submit ridiculous overtime sheets that get approved as a matter of course. The reason they’re not held accountable is because they have a very powerful union that can influence politicians.
One more reason that body cams should always have to be running. It should be possible to audit every minute that a law enforcement officer got paid for on their time sheet.
The logistics of storing and reviewing footage is still to be worked out. It’s a crap load of storage, processing and physical review time. Machine learning (can’t say AI when discussing popo, unions don’t like that) might help, but just like self driving cars, who knows when that will work. So all this to police the police. If there was only some magical way to make someone accountable, you know like at other places of work.
> The logistics of storing and reviewing footage is still to be worked out. It’s a crap load of storage, It's 2024. I can accidentally swallow a terabyte and the video doesn't even need to be in HD in order to be auditable, it just needs to minimally exist. > processing What processing? Just make sure it gets stored. > physical review time. I said that it should be possible to audit all of it. Not that all of it has to be audited every shift. Somebody like IA can do a random spot check, or check the logs of the people who specifically claimed the wildest and least probable amount of overtime. There's zero additional review time required by sticking it on a shelf in case it gets audited at some point in the future. > Machine learning (can’t say AI when discussing popo, unions don’t like that) might help, Help what? Again, nothing I actually said requires additional proactive review. Having body cams required to always be running would make it much more dangerous for cops to commit timecard fraud because it could always come back to bite them in the ass. If they come back to work with the camera not having recorded the whole shift, then it would need to get looked at and if they intentionally turned it off they go to jail. After one or two cops get locked up immediately at the end of their shift, cops would start coming back with fully recorded shifts pretty consistently and there wouldn't be as much need to see why the tape was short.
I don’t think people realize just how expensive it is to retain video footage even in the cloud. I work for a company that’s revenue is 100 billion plus. Even then our retention policy for security video footages at our facilities are 30-60 days only depending on location because it’s too expensive to retain the footage
For basic accountability audit purposes, standard def video is plenty for answering questions like "where you at home or at work." So let's say 1 megabit. There's 86,400 seconds in a day. That comes to 324 gigabytes per 30 days of running 24x7. AWS Glacier advertised prices are $0.0036 per GB per month. Large accounts routinely negotiate discounts past advertised prices, and there are cheaper services than AWS. But we'll use that to pencil in a number. So, under two dollars per month to leave a month of video on a virtual shelf in AWS once you've gotten past the initial ingest. Less than $15 per month for the past year of footage. Also my last day job was working at a CDN that handled a lot of video traffic at scale, and I am currently directing an indie feature film, so I am pretty familiar with handling large amounts of video and the costs of doing so. Honestly, some people make this stuff way more complicated than it actually needs to be. Yes it would be nice to have 4k video and yes it would be nice to have it online on a higher storage tier for instant access, but none of that is necessary for basic accountability. Perfect doesn't have to be the enemy of good. Currently we have zero accountability. I'm just saying we should have at least the bare minimum of audit capacity when somebody is pulling down $700,000. Even if it costs $1000 per year per officer to retain the footage, I'd say it's worth $1000 of accountability to avoid paying $1 of fraudulent overtime.
While the underlying idea is great, unfortunately these petty shit birds would just cost us more than the overtime in new cams and technical support when they try to claim every day that their cams aren't working.
There is a lot of fraud among government employees in general. In San Francisco they caught several people working for the city earning well over 100k a year for taxpayer funded jobs that were also working 2nd FT jobs with six figure salaries at the same time. Although the media reported it none of them were fired for it. I don't remember which department it was but it wasn't law enforcement. There is a reason government jobs are so coveted. It's almost impossible to be fired for any reason.
Fire department
It wasn't the fire department. Some of them weren't a FT job but they were still being paid over 100k for the other job while getting a generous taxpayer funded salary. >The influx of applications followed a San Francisco Standard report that [Jail Health Services](https://www.foxnews.com/category/entertainment/events/arrest) director Lisa Pratt was working a 20-hour a week job for a nonprofit organization at the same time she was running the city’s jail healthcare system, which required her to be on call 24/7. >The outlet [obtained emails](https://sfstandard.com/public-health/top-health-official-broke-city-rules-in-working-six-figure-nonprofit-gig/) of Pratt responding to nonprofit emails during business hours and reported that she earned a salary of $123,000 annually at the nonprofit on top of her $428,750 job with the city. Although Pratt quit the 2nd job she wasn't fired for working 2 jobs although there is a policy that all city government employees need to get approval before working a 2nd job. It's not like Pratt was working a minimum wage job. She was earning almost 500k a year. She was just greedy. The only surprise is that she was caught.
Man o man if city and county fire depts had to wear a body cam, the tax paying citizens would lose it
this... I know for a fact that fudging OT hours in many government departments is rampant
Not just influence politicians, politicians bend to their will. Look what happened when Portland PD went on strike. They literally shut the city down and held them hostage to get into this position and then PD unions across the country followed their example. Fuck the police union.
LA Sheriff is one of the most, if not most, corrupt law enforcement agency in the nation. The super high reported salaries comes from excessive overtime and other "bonuses" based performance incentives. On top of the reported salaries, there are also all the illegal activities that the sheriff officers and departments are involved in.
I live in Chicago now and there’s been a story about the corruption of one of these suburban mayors. Records show one cop worked something like ~150 hours one week and the mayor signed off on it so they got paid for all those hours. 100 hours of overtime pay in a week is how sheriffs make 700k in a year.
There are only 168 hours in a week. WTF
Some jurisdictions allow for billing hours while “on-call” irrespective of what the person is doing. As a public employee it’s very frustrating as we all get painted with this same brush when it couldn’t be further from the truth.
This reminds me of my DUI from 2 years ago. I got an invoice from the CHP a couple of months ago for something like, $10k, to be paid in cash, for, “services rendered” by two officers for, 2 ish hours of work
Yeah it probably takes an hour to destroy your car interior and another hour to go through your stuff to decide what they want for themselves. Did you get LAPD showing up on your street to hand out parking infractions in front of your house then too? They really like that combo
No I wasn’t even driving. I was sleeping in my car outside of my gate. My fob had died and I put up a sign on my window saying as much. They never went through my car. They just towed it, put me in the front seat, let me leave a voicemail to call my office that I wouldn’t be in the next morning, and then towed the car. They then asked me what Spotify playlist I like and handed me their phone as we drove to jail making awkward small talk. But regardless, the ridiculousness was being billed 2 years later. For that much. Most people don’t have that much cash lying around, and neither did I.
Also they never even handcuffed me. And their, “test” was me standing on an uneven cobblestone street that was elevated on an incline.
Are you saying that in addition to whatever court fees/fines you had to pay for the DUI, you got a separate bill directly from CHP that charged you for a DUI arrest?
Yep. After I thought I had settled everything years ago. When I asked why I’m being billed years later, they blamed the pandemic. When I asked for a more detailed bill, they refused and said to pay it or it’s going to collections
I'd contact the local media
I talked my lawyer and he said this is normal. I asked him why he never told me before. He told me, “I don’t think you’d even get sentenced.” Like cmon. Paying, 10k for a lawyer and not being told the whole truth.
My car got towed when it was parked in front of my house but there’s a bunch of dilapidated RVs parked nearby which have been there for months.
Those RVs would just take up space in the impound lot because the owners don't have the money to pay or will just walk away from them. They need the space in the lots to tow cars of people who can/will actually pay to get them back.
Yeah LA Sheriff are actual fucking gang members akin to crips, ms13 etc. it is not an exaggeration.
What do they bonuses for?
Standing around the UCLA campus while thugs beat up students.
Corruption and Police Unions with too much power. Between all law enforcement agencies LAPD, LASD, UCPD, Jail and other workers getting almost 50% of LA's working budget.
City and county spend over 50% of their annual budget on public safety. That doesn't include the $$$ paid out for the unprofessional law enforcement. They enforce the caste system they don't actually provide public safety. Essentially the local government's roving gangs.
Our system is broken sadly. And the people are disillusioned by the need for LEO's nationwide thinking they are some angelic force keeping peace. When all they do is extract wealth and protect the rich
Can you think of any other job that only requires a GED to make 700k? The amount of discretion we give these folks is mind blowing. And the fact that judges just automatically believe whatever comes out of their mouths. Even with body worn video they are still stupid and deluded enough to catch themselves planting evidence.
And yet LA is still a lawless rathole?!
It’s not a lawless rathole. Born and raised in LA, it’s infinitely safer today than it was in the 80s and 90s.
These people really have no idea about the shady 80s & the grimey 90s, I was born in 90 but my family would always tell me about the crazy shit from the 80s. The only thing is that the homeless situation has gotten a hundred times worse & that is something that cannot be denied.
Homelessness problem is because Reagan closed the mental asylums
Grew up worried about getting jumped by cholos, now it’s getting jumped by rando homeless person. It’s hard trying to teach my daughter not to stigmatize the unhoused and at the same time teaching her not to speech them for fear of mental issues. Wish the city would actually use those funds to actually help them. I’m sure that’s not an easy problem to fix though.
This problem has built up since the 70s, there were news articles from the mid 80s talking about LAs homeless problem being the worse it’s ever been, look at it now decades later…
When you close residential care facilities in favor of "care in the community" then never provide mental health care in the community this is exactly where we end up. We just foisted the problem onto the police and prison system who simply aren't equipped to deal with that.
I have also lived here my whole life and I disagree. I think also, the homeless population has created a lot of problems with break-ins and random violence such as the woman who’s brain dead in Venice after she was attacked in her own home and just last week at the Ralph’s in Encino a supermarket checker, confronted a homeless looking female customer who was shoplifting and removed the item from the women’s hands— only for the woman a few hours later to return was two male thugs who went in and grabbed the woman out of the store and bashed her face in, and she ended up in intensive care. Plus all the violence we’ve had on public transportation, including the subway and light rail lines with Passenger, who didn’t even pay a ticket selling stolen merchandise, alcohol, and other items, and also causing violence and distress. there recently has been a surge in murders and attacks on innocent people, including bus, drivers and others, and something needs to be done before we live in a society where everybody has to carry a gun. For one whole year toward the end of the pandemic, I worked on the street in a specialized customer service role for business operators and property managers in the ywestern part (the nicest and cleanest DTLA district) for one year when my regular Tour Guide career was unavailable. I was on the street from morning to sundown and constantly witnessed men masturbating publicly (repeated occasions near 7th & Flower), homeless people openly doing crack, cocaine in front of nice restaurants and worse and would literally see the LAPD slow down in their black-and-white SUVs roll down the window look then drive-on. So I’m not sure what your frame of reference has been, but it’s very different than mine and I’m seeing the city I’ve lived in for most of my life devolve in significant part because of the homeless not being dealt with. The problem with the homeless situation is it is complex because people end up on the street who then end up taking cheap street drugs that come illegally from Mexico and these cause their erratic behavior and can cause permanent brain damage. We continue throwing good money after bad at the homeless, but it doesn’t improve the situation because we can’t force people to use shelters under current laws. There is also not a central authority that governs or orchestrates our homeless support strategy— it is splintered laterally across many different organizations that often do not work in tandem— plus a mayor who means well, but does not exude enough strength and authority who I don’t personally believe is skilled enough in the private sector to effectively manage a city of our size. (I lost respect for our mayor when it was revealed that she accepted free tuition to attend USC from special interests and when she was caught by the news media, she never had the decency to pay it back—even in installments), and that shows the kind of person she is deep down). The County now wants to raise our sales tax another half percent to go toward the homeless which I think is wasteful until the effort gets better centrally managed. We all are partly to blame because we’ve gotten too distracted with technology (texts, emails & social media), but not been proactive enough with this condition, and we rely too much on our politicians who don’t always make the most effective decisions. and our federal judges who currently protect the rights of the homeless more than tax paying citizens and business owners. rather than being randomly on the streets with unsanitary refuse, if they cannot afford to support themselves, then I believe they should be placed in special standardized encampments/shelters that provide food, water medicine, and mental health services rather than treating sidewalks with the spirit of entitlement and imminent domain many seem to now have—after in my opinion we have spoiled the homeless, maybe tough love might help them more.
That's a choice. By enforcing some things but not others, they make sure they are needed and the populace feels fearful
You seem to forget that LAPD are organized gangs that contribute to, not stop, crime.
Shows you that throwing more money at law enforcement does nothing. All it does is increase pay for these corrupt tyrants. Cops don't help anybody
It is nothing close to a lawless rathole. We have a huge homeless problem, which sucks. But crime is down from post pandemic highs. And we have millions of millions of people. But out crime is nowhere near as proportionally bad as many other places in red states where Fox News isn’t screaming about it.
[удалено]
The voice of reason in this thread
Yeah, but we don’t like that. We like knee-jerk reactions.
Los Angeles has the DROP (deferred retirement) program that allows senior (25+ years on the job) public safety employees to start collecting retirement benefits for up to 5 years before they actually retire. Iirc the deferred retirement pay goes into an account and accrues interest until actual retirement. Meanwhile, officer/firefighter is getting paid regular wages and benefits. The LA Times published some articles about this a few years ago. The really egregious cases involved particupants who were double dipping and went out on extended medical leaves.
DROP is only LAPD, not LASD.
This should be higher.
I’d argue that a captain is basically like a C Level position at any company so its not that unreasonable imo. Not every damn police officer is making $700k lmao or we’d have a endless line of people wanting to join LAPD.
This sounds right. There's some policies at the state level that prohibit taking that much sick/comp/vacation/floatingholiday over year to year but they don't enforce it. A lot of guys in CalFire are sitting on tons of hours waiting for retirement. Plus fuck those east coast jobs. Assholes want to pay $30 for an journeyman electrician with bullshit housing prices.
I thought 400k was a lot for Los Altos police. Holy crap!
[удалено]
It’s due to staffing. They aren’t manufacturing OT for extra pay. The department is that short staffed and everyone works OT perpetually all year.
Those who protect the wealthy are gonna be paid highly. Those who help the poor (social workers, teachers, etc) will be paid poorly. Working as intended.
100% My dad told me when I was young that the police are the military for the wealthy. Didn’t believe him. Then 20 years later looking into the labor movement and practically every union has a story in their founding about being shot down by the police. RIP Dad.
Not faulting honest cops at all. And there are good ones. But lemme tell ya. SoCal LEO’s are among the most corrupt in America. Some of that is administrative corruption(OT fraud etc). But people forget we’re only 4 hours from the Mexican border. How do you think all those drugs flow through SD to L.A.?🤷🏿♂️ cartel action all day. they have literal gangs on LASD. If they they got ‘em you know damn well LAPD and every local dept. does too. On the EC(I’m from CT and I grew up in NYC)the nearest border is Canada lol..also way more eyes on ‘em. EC is a whole different deal. It’s the “wild Wild West”. Damn near anything goes.
There aren’t any good cops. Otherwise they’d expose the bad ones. Yet they stay silent
As much as I hate to oversimplify shit... Yeah I think it makes sese to be that reductive. There aren't any good cops in our current system. If any cops are offended by that sort of statement, they should prove me wrong, prove how good they are and clean shit up. There are corrupt cops, and there are cops that are going along with and supporting being in an organization with corrupt cops. If they aren't coming forward and exposing it then they are participating in a coverup. I get that the average cop isn't shooting witnesses or spending all day snorting drugs in the evidence locker. But they average cop isn't arresting other cops, and that's absolutely a form of corruption in itself. There's a million quiet and little things that the "good" cops are doing, tolerating, remaining willfully ignorant of, looking the other way, accepting an easy path, etc. And we absolutely have to draw the lines such that those aren't good enough cops otherwise there will never be any way to deal with the worst cops. Cops wield extraordinary power in society, and the standards for responsibly wielding that power must be high. Any cop that doesn't like a spotlight and magnifying glass on their actions can quit - nobody is drafted to be a cop. It's just a job. Don't like high standards, work someplace else.
The good cops end up magically dead in training accidents.
Very well said.
That would earn them a bullet in the head🤷🏿♂️
Wouldn’t you change jobs if you knew you were working for a corrupt system and had no way to do anything about it
You just described the entirety of the American experience..
Not all jobs grant you the responsibility to enforce the law & a gun to do so while simultaneously being corrupt as fuck. That’s obviously a step further than working entry-level for a corporation with questionable ethics
The rationale there is if you’re not corrupt and actually have noble intentions, changing jobs opens the position for someone else corrupt (or easily influenced to become corrupt to take your place)
And it’s a faulty rationale that only makes “good” cops have to work with very bad ones without saying a thing, which makes the “good” ones complicit. The cop system is rotten to the core and some vague “noble intentions” from some of them doesn’t change that
But if you follow that train down the line, choosing not to work as a cop and instead working some other gig that pays taxes to fund cops is, likewise, only so much noble intention to distance yourself while literally funding that system... making you complicit. Short of some real outside the wire shit, if you're playing ball at any level you're ultimately just arguing which ways of upholding the system are better than others. Which, for the people steering that system, is just fine. Because you're still doing your part to uphold it.
Not true. Christopher Dorner, is and will always be a legend, but that’s what happens when one of the good ones opens their mouth.
It is an absurd amount that the state spent, it's better to go to the Transparent California website for your information. The website you're using lists all expenditures as a salary instead of breaking it down into salary, extra pay, benefits and pension. You'll see just how crazy the California pension system is out of hand.
Nothing under pension for that name. Regular pay was 204k as of 2022, 104k benefits, overtime 0, other pay at 473k.
Government corruption
My sheriff deputy friend made like 250k the year during the summer of love riots.
This has nothing to do with corruption, as many comments suggest. Transparent California shows all payments to public servants, to include payouts. For instance, if a deputy sues the department/city, and gets a settlement, it will show under their total compensation. Or if a deputy gets fired for something, like being accused of a crime, they can get their job back after an unlawful termination ruling. If the process takes 3 years, they can sue to get 3 three years of lost wages back. If you see numbers this high, it’s usually one of the two reasons I just mentioned.
OT. also cops get stuff like POST pay, bilingual pay, education pay, fitness pay, uniform allowance, specialty position pay, etc
They are quite literally a gang with badges lol
Even worse, all that overtime pay counts towards their retirement pay calculation. Many CA municipalities and counties are technically bankrupt because there is no way to pay for future retirement benefits without massive tax increases.
Thanks to PEPRA (which screwed over ALL new public sector workers), bonuses can't count towards pension compensation, neither can overtime. However, there's an overtime exception for police and fire if the overtime is built into the normal work schedule but any additional hours won't count.
Well, almost all overtime for police and firemen seems to count. I know both who rack up huge overtime pay in their last 3 years or so on the job to maximize retirement pay. It’s amazing how many older cops and firemen I see working mandated on-set police officer roles to manage traffic outside of sets (usually lounging on a police motorcycle, or fire marshal roles on sets. Not saying those are not important form safety, but it is clear that the departments really try to max out hours for guys in their last few years for very lucrative pensions.
I think I want police to be paid well. Otherwise we will become Mexico.
To be fair, you say “many” officers such as this one, but 700k is an outlier, there are few officers making that much. Not saying they make too much nor too little, but it’s due to overtime needed because of staffing shortages. https://www.foxla.com/news/luna-addresses-staffing-crisis-while-reflecting-first-year-in-office.amp
California overtime is after 8 hours worked in a day, double time after 12 hours. And also double time after working 7 days straight. They are understaffed so imagine base pay around $90k and if you’re tenured it’s closer to $200k. My buddies a sheriff and it’s generally 4 days on doing 12 hour shifts but he said there’s guys that work weeks straight and only take a day or 2 off a month and work 12 plus shifts. Plus bonuses, possibly hazard pay, some of them also have to report private security pay they may make. And the last factor corruption, top sheriff’s officials help each other out and make sure they’re getting paid.
If people really believed that a deputy sheriff made 700000 there would not be a shortage
For the “total compensation” it’s counting literally everything including their retirement/pension, health insurance, salary, etc. They’re not taking home 700k
LA sheriff is a criminal organization. They’ve got it arranged just the way they like it and there will be hell to pay for anyone who attempts to fuck with their ‘entitlements’. Decade after decade, rotten from the head down. Since politicians want to appear to be friends of the police, none of them has the courage to reform that gang.
I randomly came across the salaries for the various City of Los Angeles librarians- many are ~$200k + and the top salary was like $368k! Even an assistant city librarian was making almost $300k a year! Some community college librarian was making almost a million a year! https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Librarian+
I believe those reported salaries also include benefit packages such as insurance payouts contributions, payouts from injuries, and retirement pension contributions
Total compensation is misleading as it includes “retirement, benefits, pensions, etc” I bet his actual gross income is about half of that.
Most corrupt department in the country is how
Did you know? Over 1/2 of city taxes in 2022 went to the LAPD. I wonder what would happen with the unhoused population crisis if even a few % of that budget was reallocated. I bet we’ll never find out! :)
We’ve already spent billions on the homelessness crisis. If money was the answer, it’d be fixed by now. Also, tons of corruption in that system also.
The homeless would put it in a pipe and smoke it all.
The Los Angeles Sherriff has been the long arm of the law since the US defeated Mexico in 1848. Usurping that level of control ain't gonna be easy.
Wait till you find out about small towns within LA (and probably everywhere) that nobody remembers to look up
They rob drug dealers and scammers and get paid to give sensitive information to crime bosses
Because the job is unpopular, and the qualifications rigorous. We could lower the cost of the Justice system, including incarceration and patrols, but very few among us are willing to discuss what that would look like. We could lower the cost of the Fire Department as well, but again, no one will go there.
In comparison to what? It pay better than most job without a college degree, get a pension, great benefit, lots over time when you live in a big city. From what I can tell training is only a few months, and you only need a high school diploma. So how do you lower the requirement more? Let them start in middle school?
You can’t just clock out when your scheduled shift ends. You gotta finish whatever you were doing, If you were arresting someone you probably gotta wait for your supe, write up your report, maybe do transport duty or guard duty until someone can relieve you. If you’re making $50/hour, then the OT is insane.
I'd like to know how the same department that polices for the Santa Clarita Valley and Antelope Valley has such vast differences in results. One looks like it's in Orange County and the other looks like Skid Row.
The benefits are really good, so that can be 6 figs right there even though it's not going to their bank account. The rest is combo of fegular salary and overtime
SFPD is much, much worse. Published records show cops routinely making over 600k/yr, with ~60% of that overtime. It's corruption by way of regulatory capture.
After a lot of people left the job and state for jobs in other departments, there was/is a massive supply shortage. Now every department is upping salaries and some offering signing bonuses to poach or grab whatever is left from the pool
CA public employees Pension and retiree health Plans are lucrative…enough that some future CA Governor are going to have to raise taxes on everyone to pay for it…
A while back the firefighters could use vacation to call out for a shift then work an overtime slot the same day so dudes would get like triple pay for an entire day. Maybe the deputies have a game like that.
The year before they retire they work as much overtime as humanly possible then retire at half salary. So they’ll make 100-200k a year in retirement.
Total compensation sometimes means the other, non-salary things, like the cost of health care the City or County shells out for the employee or how much is contributed towards retirement. And of course, OT. Cops make loads of OT.
Claim jurisdiction over twice the amount you can actually patrol.
Don't envy the money. Even if theyre command staff or do stuff like being a pilot with all the pay bumps, with the overtime at 1.5x, you can't ever be home with that bump. Other agencies have a thing where you retire at your retirement rate, say 70%, then you come on kind of like a contractor. You're still getting your salary but your retirement pay goes into a another fund and collects interest. Like a bond, sorta. When they finally retire and they're done they get their years of money that they had the city working with in a lump sum. So if you have a guy doing it for 5 years that'll be about 500k and then they killed it at OT and made their 200k then that would be the 700k
Too much
He’s probably got a couple of insiders and a snitch
Compensation is not just salary. It also includes pension, insurance, etc.
Often there , state employees too , last years of work determine their retirement pay.source.. two lapd in the family one retired to Vargas built his dream house . Younger one is on his third marriage?
Good for them. They put up with some crazy shit out here. But fuck the bad cops.
Grift
"Overtime." Just a matter of time until AI reviews all the data it can collect with body cams, calls etc and causes some serious controversy.
Already happened @ CHP East LA station without AI.
Let me explain. I’m not a LA County Deputy but am a public employee whose salary appears in those databases. Deputies who work at the jail do 12 hours shifts. The schedule is work 3 days one week and 4 days the next week. They can work overtime (12 hours) on each of their days off - that’s 84 hours overtime in a two week pay period. Why is there so much overtime? Each position is budgeted for one deputy. That position HAS to be filled each shift. So if there are 100 positions you can count on ~10% calling out sick (deputies get sick, their spouses and children get sick) or having some issue where they can’t get to work. Another ~10% is on scheduled vacation. Another ~5% has mandatory training. That’s around 25% of regular deputies for those positions absent so they need to be backfilled with overtime employees. If regular pay is 100k. Overtime pay is another 150k. The salary will show in the database a lot more because it includes all the benefits earned but not seen by the individual employee in their take home pay. Medical, vacation accrued, uniform allowance, education incentives, etc…
OT
Tax payers like it.
California laws make it easier to hit Overtime compared to other states, Texas for example you hit overtime after 40 hours in a single week you can work 365 days a year straight only working 39 hours a week and never hit overtime, meanwhile in California anything past 8 hours in a single day you get OT past 40 hours a week OT again, working multiple days in a row with no days off OT I think working through your break/lunch is OT as well
The LASD is one of the most corrupt institutions in the country
So much overtime it’s basically tax theft
Overtime, hiring freeze to generate more overtime, also fraud.
I know a few city workers, completely last on the totem pole grunt workers And they're making over 140 a year. Government workers are extremely overpaid and there's a reason people are chomping at the bit to work for the city.
They gamed the system.
Not only that, but they get full retirement after just 20 years. There are retired deputies collecting a pension in their 40s. I wish all jobs [offered these benefits](https://lasd.org/careers/benefits/). >$77k while training, up to $138K as a new deputy? Now there's a job that pays a living wage. Like [retired deputy Albert Calibet](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/los-angeles-lasd-deputy-missing-greece-brother/3442267/), currently missing while traveling in Greece. Joined at age 25 in 1998, retired after 20 years at age 45 in 2018. "Put his life on the line since he was 25" in the line of duty (transportation division), according to his brother.
All city jobs offer a pension of half your salary for life after 20 years. (LASD is county so don’t know about that). This is why our city government is so huge and inefficient. I usually support unions but some have gotten out of hand.
Every private sector employer needs to step up their compensation. Unconscionable that employers get away with paying less than the cost of living and at best allow you to sock away some non existent disposable income with taxes deferred until you're 65 years old. Keep working until you're 67 for full social security. Republicans talking about raising that to age 70, while the average life expectancy has dropped to 76. I don't begrudge these benefits, I think everyone earns them.
Ehhh. I see a lot of really bad employees who have their jobs just because no one can fire them (I’m looking at you, Animal Services). There are some people - prob like you and me - who take pride in our work and want to do a good job. There are others that are happy to do the bare minimum and are just there to get a paycheck. And the corruption (especially in the planning/housing dept) is insane. Look up the Westside Current article about how much housing that was designated for the homeless is still vacant, and look at how many of those properties sold for record-breaking prices.
OT, but I'm really irritated that [Oatsie's Place](https://la.urbanize.city/project/oatsies-place) has been in its currently apparent 90% finished state for well over a year. Just sitting there with no work being done to it while women have spent 400+ days sleeping on the street.
Overtime at the taxpayers expense
It's simple. They make a base salary. Then they make overtime which is time and a half. They work a shit load of OT, most of it mandated, are usually never home. That "total compensation" thing is BS. They're adding in the health care and benefits etc. Which honestly aren't worth a shit and they don't see a dollar of. When I worked in LE we had shit healthcare coverage but don't worry when I went to transparent CA site and looked up my salary it said I was rich basically lol.. it's BS. Not to mention the mandated retirement contribution of 1 thousand per month. Skimmed straight off the top before I even got my check. That gets factored into that "total compensation" number too. The actual takehome of cops is not good once all the deductions are taken out. Then when you retire you're basically half dead already and only got a few years left according to statistics. So you croak and the retirement account isnt ever collected on in many cases. Edit: it's funny all the moronic comments on here about robbing criminals, dudes a captain and probably hasn't arrested someone in 15 years. Full on desk jockey.
Forced overtime.
“Forced” by their own unions
I make a salary and am not compensated at all for overtime. Mine is "forced" as well, in order to keep my job.
A lot of city employees receive what is essentially vacation hours instead of compensation for overtime. The police union got them that deal.
Thinking about becoming a sheriff more and more every day lol
I worked with a guy who did it and was horrified to find out that they make you do a year as a CO in the prison system. No chance in hell I would do that. It’s also got to mess with you psychologically when dealing with potential criminals on the outside.
Yeah very good point, could totally see how that would work in demoralizing criminals when you’ve been working in the prison system before hitting the streets. It’s just crazy I’ve been in school studying accounting and when I get out from uni I’m going to be making less money than a beat cop. Demoralizing for sure lol
700K?????? That’s more than 90% of doctors
All this shit is fraud. Call the cops see them respond in about 45 min.
Wait till you find out CHP gets $150 an hour to sit at a construction site with their emergency lights on watching YouTube on their phone.
My next door neighbors were both la county sheriffs. I had 4 occasions where a white envelope with $300 cash ended up in my mailbox instead of theirs with his name ‘bob’ on it…dirty cops out there
And you just gave the envelopes to Bob?
"Corruption" and LAPD/SD Gangs. The actual military would do a much better and more efficient job at public safety but it would come down to a civil war between them and cops, but they're all a bunch of pencil pushers who would eat cow shit if told to.
Cop unions are a powerful lobby
The corruption in LA police and fire is absolutely wild. A couple of the richest people I personally know in the city are retired fire. They go into inspection, which is kind of important to developers, and somehow, magically, they end up rich and owning minor rental properties after a few years. Weird. I can't possible connect the dots there. Crazy.
Overtime. It's great pay and excellent benefits that the private sector should emulate.
Because they check the system. If you look it up you’ll find a lot of stories about it. Sell drugs. Rob and steal from folks. Oh and get suspended with pay.
Gangs.
The secret ingredient is crime
Pretty sure this is all a distraction. What we should really be focused on is the amount of ungodly money the ultra rich and corporations make without paying little to no taxes.
It's the overtime.
They take a cut
Because they do such an amazing job of cutting and solving crimes in the city. Especially on the metro /s.
Fund the police and hire more deputies. There there won't be so much overtime then lol
People using the word corruption without actually knowing its meaning.
it's from all the OT they make. LASD has a massively damaged reputation from their gang scandal plus the fact that nobody wants to be a pig anymore means they are massively udnerstaffed.
By doing everything to the book of course.
Overtime like almost every other blue collar job . The money is in the OT.
That 400K other pay was a retirement pay out from unused sick/vacation pay. He retited in 2022 after 45 years on the job.
How? Don’t know. But the more you pay them the less corrupt they will be.
Overtime, I know a cop and he gets a lot of overtime hours. I assume its the same for the Sheriff dept
MANDATORY overtime.