13 Paterson police officers made over $100K each in overtime last year

Yahoo

17-02-2025

PATERSON — Overtime spending in the Police Department skyrocketed during 2024, with 13 officers collecting more than $100,000, including one officer who made $224,470.
In total, the department spent $8 million on overtime last year, a 60% increase over the $5 million expended in 2023.
Those numbers show the impact of the additional funding the state has provided for Paterson law enforcement efforts after the New Jersey Attorney General's Office seized control of the city Police Department in March 2023, providing an extra $10 million each of the past two years.
Before the attorney general's takeover, Paterson police overtime spending amounted to about $3 million per year.Paterson City Council President Alex Mendez called the state intervention the 'best thing that ever happened' to the municipal police department, saying the overtime has provided a massive increase in law enforcement presence.
'They are out there 24-7,' Mendez said of the police overtime initiative targeting crime hot spots and illegal nightclubs.
Most of the top overtime earners from 2024 have worked on the Violent Crime Suppression initiative, which assigns extra patrols using overtime to areas where shootings have been a problem, officials said.
Community activist Ernest Rucker said anyone who travels on Broadway or 10th Avenue will see the benefits of the overtime surge.
'There's been a large impact on those troubled streets that we've been complaining about for years,' Rucker said. 'What that presence has produced has been very effective.'
In 2024, 23 Paterson police officers collected more than $80,000 in overtime. In 2023, just three city officers surpassed that amount.
Mayor Andre Sayegh did not provide a response when asked Thursday for his reaction to the police overtime spending numbers. Sayegh is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit pending before the New Jersey Supreme Court that is seeking to end the attorney general's takeover of the Police Department.
Local officials and community leaders said they expected the overtime spending to increase with the extra money from the state. But the city had not revealed the scope of that spending surge until it provided Paterson Press this week with documents on employee overtime for 2024.
In past years, members of the Public Works Department ranked among Paterson's top overtime earners. In 2024, 63 of Paterson's 65 highest overtime recipients were officers in the Police Department.
The overtime totals do not include 'extra duty' work that officers perform for traffic control at road construction sites and other tasks paid for by utilities or private entities. New Jersey does not include overtime payments in police retirees' pensions.
Not everyone is celebrating the jump in police overtime spending in Paterson.
Jason Williams, a Black Lives Matter member who teaches social justice classes at Montclair State University, called the overtime numbers 'a scandal,' asserting that law enforcement officials were 'hiding behind' fears of crime to justify the spending.
'It's wasteful. It's big government out of control,' Williams said. 'I don't think it's being regulated the way it needs to be.'
Williams said he thinks the money would be better spent on social programs in the city and questioned whether the overtime has been effective in reducing crime.
'The people on the streets still live in fear,' Williams said. 'They don't want to walk down the street because something can happen to them.'
Statistics provided by the Paterson Police Department show that the number of killings in the city during state control had dropped by 61%, but that overall crime numbers have stayed about the same. From 2023 to 2024, killings fell by 35% and burglaries by 4.7%, while robberies increased by 15% and aggravated assaults by 9%.
'The Paterson Police Department has implemented a number of initiatives to increase presence and enforcement in designated hotspots that have historically seen elevated levels of violent crime and quality-of-life issues within Paterson in order to drive down crime and dispel fear and disorder in the community,' said Rob Rowan, a spokesman for the department.
'Since the strategy was put in place, there have been double-digit decreases in major violent crime reporting categories,' Rowan said.
Policemen's Benevolent Association President Angel Jimenez said the use of overtime patrols to increase police presence in the city is not a sustainable strategy. He and other officers said some of the overtime assignments are mandatory and are wearing down officers in a city where Attorney General Matthew Platkin has acknowledged the department is understaffed.
'I've talked to the guys, and one of the big reasons our morale is so bad is the mandatory overtime,' Jimenez said. 'The guys appreciate the money, but they need a day off.'
Jimenez said he thinks the only practical solution is for officials to approve an increase in the size of the city Police Department, a staffing issue contingent on decisions in Trenton, because Paterson gets extra funding from the state to balance its budget.
Community leaders wonder whether the extra funding for police work in the city will continue. Gov. Phil Murphy, who has less than a year left in office, is supposed to unveil his proposed budget later this month.
Also, it's not clear whether the state would continue providing Paterson extra law enforcement funding if the mayor wins the lawsuit and regains control of the Police Department.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: 13 Paterson police made over $100K each in overtime in 2024