Syracuse, N.Y. ― A Syracuse police policy of paying officers who were sent home to avoid work during the pandemic cost taxpayers nearly $300,000, according to a city audit.
The department at the same time paid other officers overtime to fill shifts that could have been filled by officers who were paid to stay home, the audit found. How much overtime was spent this way couldn’t be determined because the city’s record-keeping is so “antiquated,” the audit found.
The audit was sparked by a Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard investigation in September that reported on the practice of sending officers home to avoid work but paying them for those hours to be on call.
Police department officials refused to say how much the practice cost, so Syracuse.com estimated it and found that the policy cost taxpayers at least $225,000. The audit found the policy cost $293,423.
After the article, city lawmakers requested Auditor Nader Maroun to review the policy.
Maroun’s audit, released Monday, found:
- While officers were paid to be home on call, other officers were called in to fill overtime shifts.
- Auditors found it was not possible to efficiently find out how often officers were paid overtime to fill shifts. It would have cost 150 hours of police department employees’ time to figure out the cost because of the department’s “antiquated” time-keeping system.
- The policy of paying people to stay home was never put into writing and still hasn’t been written down.
- There is no evidence the mayor or the deputy mayor were consulted on the policy change.
- The Common Council, which was not told about the policy change, should have been informed before the policy was implemented.
- The police chief was remiss in not developing other socially distanced assignments for officers instead of sending them home.
- There is no evidence that the policy was any more effective in preventing the spread of covid than other available changes in the workplace.
- The police department needs to consult with the Onondaga County Health Department and/or other health experts on public health issues.
“With all we’ve learned about COVID-19 in the past year, it is now clear this practice should have been handled differently,” Mayor Ben Walsh said in a statement Tuesday.
Walsh in September declined to answer questions from Syracuse.com and instead released a statement supporting the chief’s decision, saying Buckner “made smart decisions to limit the risk of exposure to Covid-19.”
Police Chief Kenton Buckner said Monday night he agreed “in part with some of the findings” of the report.
“COVID was by far the number one killer of police across our nation in 2020,” the chief said. “We had several officers test positive for the virus, and many more quarantined during the pandemic. We were blessed not to lose an officer during this crisis.”
“We made many decisions while flying in the dark during unprecedented times in our nation’s history,” he said. “Our lessons learned coupled with this complete report will serve as a roadmap to assist our agency in making adjustments to our operations.”
For more response, both the mayor and chief referred Syracuse.com to a statement in the audit by the mayor’s office.
In that response, Deputy Mayor Sharon Owens wrote that the mayor’s office agreed the department should not have handed out overtime while officers were on call and that the department should have had a written policy.
Owens, however, disagreed the department should have found more creative ways to use officers and that the department needed to consult with the county Health Department to come up with its pandemic response.
Maroun also recommended the department modernize its timekeeping system, a process that’s already under way. The current system has been in place since the 1980s and the new system is expected to be put in place by this summer.
Buckner approved the policy of paying officers when they were not working at the same time more than 100 other city employees were furloughed because of a budget crisis caused by the coronavirus shutdown. None of those furloughs included sworn officers; the chief has said the contract with the police union prohibits furloughs.
For nearly two months, officers in the police department’s patrol division were sent home and allowed to be on call for a shift once every two work weeks. Officers were paid for those shifts whether they worked or not.
The department has maintained in Syracuse.com’s initial article and in answering Maroun’s questions that it did not track how often officers were called in. Deputy Chief Richard Trudell told Syracuse.com he could remember at least three times officers were called in.
In all, officers were paid to be on call for 1,057 shifts, according to the audit.
Police officials have said the policy was designed to try to stop the spread of the coronavirus. It was possible to send officers home because call volume dropped 18% year over year at the start of the pandemic.
The practice likely provided “minimal benefit” in stopping the spread of the coronavirus, according to Brooks Gump, a Syracuse University public health professor.
Walsh confirmed Tuesday in a statement that he was informed about the policy by Buckner. The chief had previously told Syracuse.com in September he informed Walsh’s office of the policy.
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