San Francisco cop reveals the staggering amount he earned in overtime pay in a year as police departments battle chronic staffing shortages

A San Francisco Police Sergeant quadrupled his salary thanks to huge hours logged as overtime the department suffers from staffing shortages.

Sergeant Dennis Lai earned more than $450,000 in overtime pay last year, boosting his base salary of $180,000, according to data analyzed by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Data from the San Francisco Controller's Office revealed overtime paid to police officers has soared as the department struggles with staffing. 

The number of police earning more than $100,000 in overtime more than tripled from 131 in the July 2021-June 2022 fiscal year to 493 in the July 2023-June 2024 fiscal year. 

'Unless you want to see a catastrophic cut to police services, the City must either solve the staffing crisis or run the department through overtime,' said Tracy McCray, the president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association. 

'Most of our officers would prefer to keep their days off and their scheduled vacations to spend time with their families and loved ones rather than work countless hours of overtime.'

Despite a city law that caps the total number of overtime hours a full-time city employee can work at 520 hours, the police department cap for overtime hours has 2,000 due to a 'critical staffing shortage' exemption.

Lai worked almost 3,500 hours in overtime, which is equal to working 21-hour days if those shifts were split evenly across five days every week of the year, according to the Chronicle's analysis.

The Controller's Office data showed that 64 officers worked beyond the 2,000 hour cap and more than 85 percent of officers surpassed the 520 cap that applies to other city employees.

Evan Sernoffsky, a spokesperson for the police department, said that increasing overtime is a 'stopgap measure' for the department.

'We recognize that overtime is unsustainable, yet San Francisco requires police for public safety,' Sernoffsky said.

'We are supercharging our recruitment and backgrounding process to rebuild our ranks as quickly as possible.' 

He said the police department has 415 fewer sworn officers than it did in 2020 but is seeing more recruits.

The San Francisco Police Department resorted to trying to recruit cops from Texas as it faces a shortage of officers.

They visited four Texas university campuses throughout the month as part of a new recruitment drive. 

The recruitment campaign comes after the police department had funding cut, causing it to pay out huge amounts of overtime while the city is experiencing a crisis of homelessness and open drug use.

Following widespread calls for reforms that swept the nation following the murder of George Floyd, the department in the California city had it funding cut.

Mayor London Breed was one of the first to openly speak out in support of defunding the police.

In October, Breed ordered city departments including police and public health to propose budget cuts of $206 million in a desperate attempt to reverse the stricken city's 'doom loop' spiral into economic collapse.