VPD STRIKE TEAM LEADS OVERTIME LIST

Report Identifies Top Areas For Extra Hours As Police Aim To Cut Costs

A crackdown on drug selling in the Downtown Eastside and a small
group of officers working 75 to 100 hours of overtime a month are
among the factors in Vancouver's recent sky-high police overtime
bills, says a new report.

The preliminary report by Simon Fraser University criminologist Curt
Griffiths goes to Vancouver city council Tuesday as the city and its
police department attempt to grapple with the staffing and overtime
crises that have caused major friction in recent years.

In the report, Griffiths acknowledges some of the well-known factors
for the overtime explosion that climbed to $15 million or more than
10 per cent of the total police budget in 2004, such as the
unexpected retirement of 170 officers within two years. (In 2005, the
overtime bill was down to $12 million.)

But he also identifies some underlying phenomena, such as the impact
of the City-wide Enforcement Team project that aimed to break up the
Downtown Eastside drug market and the unusual patterns of overtime
earnings within specialized units.

Five officers billed 700 to 800 hours of overtime in the seven-month
period of 2005 he studied, while another 15 billed 580 to 686 hours
in the same time.

"The top five overtime earners in the department are working overtime
hours that could be considered excessive," he noted in a summary of
his preliminary findings after examining police operations for the
last seven months of 2005.

"The high levels of overtime among these individuals suggests that
the respective VPD managers should re-examine the decision-making
processes that led these individuals to work such high levels of
overtime in such high-stress positions, where officer fatigue may
have serious consequences."

The department's top 20 overtime earners accounted for almost 10 per
cent of the total number of overtime hours in police operations,
Griffiths also noted. Most of the officers work with Strike Force 2,
one of two teams responsible for surveillance of high-risk criminals.

Griffiths said he didn't have the information yet to determine
whether the problem was with a lack of resources or a problem with
deployment and staffing.

The 153-page report also observes that until March of 2005, the
department had no clear policy on overtime or any way of quickly
tracking how much was being billed.

Both police and police union spokesmen said the study has already
produced positive results and is a good step toward identifying some problems.

Sgt. Adam Palmer, who worked with the joint city police-outside
consultant team on the study, said improved monitoring helped the
department save $1 million in overtime in 2005. The department will
be returning $700,000 of that to the city.

Vancouver Police Union head Tom Stamatakis said he welcomes the
report because it will help identify ways to reduce overtime.

"The overtime is excessive. We've had officers who work 38 days in a
row. Our officers are really looking forward to this audit being done."

Stamatakis said the high hours billed by the strike force members are
completely understandable. In 1997, the city had three strike-force
teams. Then-police-chief Bruce Chambers cut that to two. "When you
have two squads, that means they're working all the time," said Stamatakis.

But he warned there may not be the easy answers that some people
think are there.

"These are complex problems that have been created over a 15-year
period, maybe longer."

Along with the overtime study, councillors will also be looking a two
other police reports. One that looked at whether less costly
civilians could do some police jobs determined that 19 positions
could be civilianized, which would save the department about $500,000.

Another report identifies the police department's goals for 2006.
They include reducing violent crime by five per cent, reducing
property crime by 15 per cent, reducing injury and fatal motor
vehicle collisions by 10 per cent, and reducing the response time to
emergency calls in the downtown district to seven minutes.