SPD still wrestling with overtime spending – and the Seattle IT department

This morning the City Council revisited a recurring pain point: the Seattle Police Department’s inability to stay within budget on its overtime expenses. The issues with how the Seattle Police Department manages overtime for its officers go back for years, if not decades, but they came under particular scrutiny starting in October 2014 when then-Chief Kathleen O’Toole requested an audit of the department’s overtime practices.  It took the City Auditor 18 months to issue the audit report; in the intervening time the City Budget Office and the City Council became acutely aware of the budget pain inflicted when SPD’s overtime …

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Notes from the SPD overtime audit briefing

This morning, the Gender Equity, Safe Communities, and New Americans Committee was briefed by the City Auditor on their recently-released audit report on the Seattle Police Department’s use and management of overtime.  I wrote on the report when it was first released, and much of today’s discussion is a repeat of that, so I won’t give a blow-by-blow report. But here are my notes of things said today that provide new points or “color commentary” based on the Council members’ interpretation of what they heard.

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