Although other categories of Police overtime declined or remained steady during FY 1996-97, special event overtime increased by 41 percent in FY 1996-97. Special event overtime has fluctuated over the past four years, representing between 27 percent and 41 percent of all paid overtime hours. In FY 1996-97, special event overtime represented approximately 46 percent of all paid overtime hours. 

• Special events impact the operations of the district stations by diverting police officers from their normal duties, and requiring that other police officers work high amounts of overtime on their scheduled days off. For every special event in FY 1996-97, an average of 260 hours of police coverage were provided by the Police Department, at a cost of over $8.2 million annually. 

• Forming a special event unit under the Special Operations Division would lessen the drain on district stations resulting from special events and would reduce special event overtime expenditures by as much as $1.1 million per year. 

• In addition, the Board of Supervisors should consider a policy option that would improve the Police Department"s ability to recover the cost of providing police coverage at certain types of special events, thereby generating as much as $650,000 in additional revenue to the City annually.

 

As part of Phase 1 of the Performance Audit of the San Francisco Police Department, we reviewed and analyzed police overtime expenditures, policies and practices and had five findings and 27 recommendations designed to reduce police overtime expenditures by as much as $6.7 million per year, including up to $2.2 million in reduced expenditures and increased revenues related to special event overtime. According to the Police Department, the Budget Analyst"s recommendations regarding overtime quotas for individual units and court overtime for preliminary hearings have been implemented. However, the Police Department reports that most of the other recommendations have not been implemented because they are subject to meet and confer requirements with the Police Officers Association (POA). As of the writing of this report, the results of such meet and confer discussions were not available.

As part of Phase 2 of this performance audit, we reviewed police overtime expenditures again in order to update our analysis, especially with regard to special event overtime. In FY 1996-97, the Police Department incurred $13,115,539 in General Fund overtime expenditures (not including $2,742,532 in General Fund holiday overtime pay), which represents an increase of $524,192 (4.2 percent) in General Fund overtime expenditures from the FY 1995-96 level of $12,591,347 (excluding $2,582,538 in General Fund holiday overtime pay). According to the Police Department, this increase results primarily from an increase in special event overtime. Special event overtime represented an estimated $5,980,630 (46 percent) of the Department"s $13,115,539 in FY 1996-97 General Fund overtime expenditures.

The Controller"s latest six month expenditure projections for the current 1997-98 Fiscal Year indicate that the SFPD will spend approximately $2.2 million more than its current overtime budget, but that such overtime will be offset by savings in permanent salaries.

Police Overtime Expenditures by Category

The SFPD tracks General Fund non-holiday overtime use by unit and by the type of overtime. Specifically, there are five types of General Fund non-holiday overtime:

Table 4.1 and Exhibit 4.1 below show overtime use by category from 1992-93 through 1996-97. Table 4.1 Hours of Overtime by Category (a) Police Department, FY 1992-93 through FY 1996-97    

Exhibit 4.1 Hours of Overtime by Category (a) Police Department FY 1992-93 through FY 1996-97 (a) Excludes accrued compensatory hours.

(b) Records of EWW usage for FY 1992-93 were not available. Additionally, the large increase in EWW overtime between FY 1993-94 and FY 1994-95 can be explained in part by a change in accounting procedures for EWW overtime and by the occurrences of the San Francisco Examiner newspaper strike in November 1994 and the UN 50 Celebration in June 1995, which both resulted in a significant amount of EWW overtime during FY 1994-95. The large increase in FY 1996-97 is primarily the result of the Mayor"s Conference, which took place in June of 1997, and which resulted in 23,310 EWW overtime hours. Excluding the 23,310 EWW hours for the Mayor"s Conference, the number of EWW overtime hours would have been 123,237 in FY 1996-97, or 41 percent of all paid overtime hours.

Table 4.1 illustrates that total paid overtime hours have generally increased from year to year over the past five years, from 172,452 hours in FY 1992-93 to 321,378 hours in FY 1996-97, or an 86 percent increase over five years. Additionally, Exhibit 4.1 demonstrates that investigations, arrest and miscellaneous overtime declined in FY 1996-97. Court overtime, although it increased in FY 1996-97, was lower in FY 1996-97 than the average of the past five years.

On the other hand, EWW or special event overtime increased by 41 percent in FY 1996-97, from 103,858 hours in FY 1995-96 to 146,547 hours in FY 1996-97. According to the Police Department, this large increase in EWW overtime was caused primarily by the Mayor"s Conference, which took place in June of 1997, and for which the Police Department incurred $940,072 in overtime expenditures (based on 23,310 EWW hours).

Appendix 4 of this report contains a table, provided by the Police Department, that illustrates the number and cost of special events by category (e.g. athletic, celebrations, demonstrations, parades, etc.) over the four year period from FY 1993-94 through FY 1996-97.

Special Event Overtime

Special events are the single largest reason for overtime in the Police Department. In FY 1996-97, the Department logged 146,547 overtime hours for special events, which represents 46 percent of all General Fund non-holiday overtime hours.

Hundreds of special events occur within City limits each year. Such events include street fairs such as the Fillmore and Haight Street Fairs, demonstrations by labor organizations or political groups, athletic events such as Bay to Breakers and the San Francisco Marathon, large celebrations such Cinco de Mayo and Carnaval, parades such as Chinese New Year and the Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade, 49ers and Giants games, and other events such as funerals and dignitary visits. Many of the larger events are planned by organizers well in advance (such as Carnaval or Bay to Breakers) or take place on a regular basis (such as Critical Mass), while smaller events such as labor demonstrations or critical incidents often occur with little or no advance notice.

The Police Department is the City agency which is primarily responsible for ensuring that special events take place in a safe and orderly fashion and without too much disturbance to non-participants. This usually involves posting signs, setting up traffic barricades, deploying officers for crowd control on foot, bicycle, horse, motorcycle or other mode of transportation and deploying officers on standby. The Department must usually re-deploy or extend shifts of on-duty personnel, or schedule off-duty personnel in order to respond to emergency situations or special events and still maintain a basic level of law enforcement services. Because special events often involve extending the shifts of on-duty personnel or scheduling off-duty personnel, special event overtime is categorized and tracked as Extended Work Week or EWW overtime. Special events impact the operations of the district stations by diverting police officers from their normal duties, and requiring that other police officers work high amounts of overtime on their scheduled days off.

We conducted an analysis in Phase 1 of this performance audit in order to determine: (a) how much police coverage is provided at each special event; and (b) what measures could be taken to reduce the cost of providing special event coverage, including alternatives that would be less disruptive to district station operations and provide more consistent availability of police officer staff for special events. Given the large increase in special event overtime that occurred during FY 1996-97, we decided to review and update our findings and recommendations regarding special event overtime from Phase 1 during Phase 2 of this performance audit.

Based on our analysis, we found that, in FY 1996-97, the Police Department deployed sworn employees at 853 special events (excluding the Mayor"s Conference, which resulted in 23,310 EWW overtime hours and 9,660 on-duty hours of police coverage). The SFPD provided 221,983 hours of police coverage for special events (or an average of approximately 260 hours of coverage per event), consisting of 86,063 on-duty hours and 135,920 overtime hours. This is equivalent to approximately 125 full-time equivalent (FTE) personnel devoted to special event coverage on a full-time, annual basis. Of these 125 personnel, approximately 48 employees are diverted from their regular assignments in order to provide police coverage for special events. The General Fund cost of deploying officers to cover special events (excluding the Mayor"s Conference) was an estimated $8,222,535 in FY 1996-97, consisting of $2,706,760 in regular pay, $5,397,289 in overtime pay, $115,349 in premium pay and $3,137 in miscellaneous expenses.

Furthermore, of the overall total of 221,983 hours of police coverage provided for special events during FY 1996-97 (excluding the Mayor"s Conference), we determined that officers from the district stations provided an estimated 95,852 (43 percent) of these hours, consisting of 23,622 on-duty hours and 72,230 overtime hours. This is equivalent to approximately 54 FTE personnel devoted to special event coverage on a full-time, annual basis, including 13 FTE personnel who are diverted from their regular assignments at the district stations.

In addition, of the overall total of 221,983 hours of police coverage provided for special events during FY 1996-97 (excluding the Mayor"s Conference), we also found that officers from the Special Operations Division, which is comprised of the Crime Prevention Company, the MUNI Transit Company, the Housing Detail and the Traffic Company, provided approximately 110,156 of these hours, consisting of 59,452 on-duty hours and 50,704 overtime hours. This is equivalent to approximately 62 FTE personnel devoted to special event coverage on a full-time, annual basis.

Accordingly, special events present a significant drain on police resources, especially at the district stations. In Phase 1 of this performance audit, we learned from district captains that the deployment of on-duty officers from the districts takes away from the ability of the districts to provide sufficient staff to perform regular police duties, such as responding to calls for service. In addition, as noted above, special event coverage is the single largest reason for overtime in the Police Department.

Special Event Planning and Management

In Phase 1 of this performance audit, we reviewed special event planning and management and recommended that the Police Department develop a special event evaluation form which includes criteria and standards against which the level of police coverage provided for each special event can be measured and used in the future as the basis for planning for special event deployment. In addition, we recommended that the Police Department, with the objective of reducing the amount of special event coverage provided by the Police Department, implement a new policy requiring that commanding officers complete an evaluation for each special event for which police coverage is provided.

The Police Department has not implemented these recommendations because, according to the Police Department, requiring that follow-up reports be completed for each special event would result in an additional level of paperwork that would not necessarily improve the Department"s ability to effectively staff recurring events.

Additionally, the Department maintains that sufficient review and evaluation of police coverage for special events already takes place. For example, the Police Department prepares a deployment plan, called the operational order, for each special event. The operational order contains (a) the event description, including the date, time, location and estimated attendance, and an assessment of whether there may be an increase in crime activity during the event; (b) a mission statement; (c) an execution and deployment plan; and (d) equipment, command and communications needs. Operational orders for special events that are confined to the boundaries of one district are prepared by the district captain, and are subject to approval from Field Operation Bureau (FOB) headquarters, while operational orders for large, City-wide events are prepared centrally by FOB headquarters. Following the event, if a significant incident took place during the event (e.g. a violent crime incident), and/or at FOB"s request, the event commander may submit an "after action" report describing that incident and the Department"s response.

The Police Department reports that these operational orders and after action reports are used to develop event histories, which are in turn used as a basis to prepare future operational orders for that event, when it recurs, or for new, similar types of events. According to the Police Department, a significant level of discussion and evaluation of police coverage for special events already occurs among Police Department managers and event planning staff when updating and revising the operational orders from year to year. However, according to staff from the Police Department, this process is not documented in writing, for both public safety and police officer safety reasons. For example, it may be undesirable for certain members of the general public to know that a decision has been made to reduce the level of police coverage for a particular special event from the prior year"s level (e.g., based on the determination that little crime activity has taken place at that event in prior years).

Furthermore, according to the Police Department, although the Department"s response to special events may sometimes appear excessive, the primary mission of the Department in responding to special events includes the prevention of crime. As such, to the extent that crime activity can be kept to a minimum at a special event indicates that the level of coverage provided by the Police Department at that event is appropriate, and a reduction in police coverage may not be desirable.

In addition, the Police Department previously used a Police Service Cost Report to record the name, date, time, location and type of the event, the number of on-duty and overtime hours incurred for the event, and related comments. However, the Police Department reports that this report did not always provide complete and accurate information on the amount of police coverage provided at special events, as FOB records on special event overtime significantly under-stated the actual number of special event overtime hours incurred, as reported in payroll records. As a result, the Police Department has revised the Police Service Cost Report so that it reflects only on-duty special event coverage. According to the Police Department, it is currently in the process of developing a method for the more accurate tracking of EWW overtime incurred for special events.

The Formation of a Special Event Unit

During our interviews with district captains, several captains identified special event coverage as one of the major factors which impacts available staffing at the district stations. In Phase 1 of this performance audit, we found that the diversion of on-duty police personnel from their regular duties at the district stations is particularly burdensome on weekends, when there is an increase in the number of calls for service. In fact, during Phase 1, we found that 40 percent of on-duty special event coverage occurs on Saturdays and Sundays. As a result, there are fewer staff available to respond to the higher number of calls for service on weekends.

In Phase 1 of this performance audit, the Budget Analyst recommended that the Police Department create a unit of officers under Field Operations Headquarters which is scheduled to provide special event coverage on a full-time basis. This unit would consolidate police coverage for special events currently provided by both the district stations and the Special Operations Division under one unit. According to the Police Department, this recommendation was not implemented due to insufficient staff, and because creating such a unit would have pulled Police Officers away from the district stations.

As such, the Budget Analyst has worked together with Police Department staff to improve this recommendation. The Budget Analyst, based on input from Police Department staff, now recommends supplementing the existing Special Operations Group with two additional squads of one Sergeant and seven Police Officers each (for a total of two Sergeants and 14 Police Officers or 16 personnel). These squads would serve as the primary response units for special events during periods when the majority of special events take place. During Phase 1, we found that Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays and Mondays are the days on which relatively more special event coverage is provided by the Police Department, whereas less special event coverage is provided on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. Thus, these two squads should be assigned to fixed shifts at the district stations primarily on weekends, based on the times at which most special events take place, as determined by the Police Department.

The Police Department advises that these two special event squads could be staffed using 16 positions, as additional sworn personnel are hired by the Department over the next 18 months to fill existing and anticipated vacancies in the Department.

The formation of such a special event unit could potentially result in a reduction in special event overtime by as many as 28,400 hours per year, based on 16 officers working an average of 1,775 hours per year (85 percent of scheduled hours), for an annual savings of $1,109,304 (28,400 hours x the average hourly overtime rate of $39.06). The creation of a special event unit would also result in a reduction in the number of on-duty hours devoted by district police officers to special event coverage, thereby allowing them to dedicate more time to perform their regular police duties, such as responding to calls for service. If successful, the Department could consider increasing the number of officers assigned to the Special Event Unit.

Special Event Cost Recovery

In Phase I of the Performance Audit of the Police Department, the Budget Analyst found that the Police Department provided police coverage at many special events at minimal, if any, cost to the event sponsor. As such, the Budget Analyst recommended that the Police Department develop policy options for consideration by the Board of Supervisors for generating additional revenues in order to offset the cost of providing police coverage at special events. In response to this recommendation, the Police Department has prepared a memorandum, which is included in Appendix 4 of this report, which requests that the Board of Supervisors consider amending Section 2.70-6 (f) of the Administrative Code in order to improve the Police Department"s ability to recover the cost of providing police coverage at certain types of special events. The Budget Analyst recommends that the Board of Supervisors consider this policy option. The Budget Analyst estimates that such an amendment to the Administrative Code could potentially generate as much as $650,000 per year in additional revenues to the Police Department, based on actual FY 1996-97 experience. According to the Police Department, this proposal will be submitted to the Police Commission for approval at a future date.

Conclusions

Although other categories of Police overtime declined or remained steady during FY 1996-97, special event overtime increased by 41 percent in FY 1996-97. Special event overtime has fluctuated over the past four years, representing between 27 percent and 41 percent of all paid overtime hours. In FY 1996-97, special event overtime represented approximately 46 percent of all paid overtime hours.

Special events impact the operations of the district stations by diverting police officers from their normal duties, and requiring that other police officers work high amounts of overtime on their scheduled days off. For every special event in FY 1996-97, an average of 260 hours of police coverage were provided by the Police Department, at a cost of over $8.2 million annually.

Forming a special event unit under the Special Operations Division would lessen the drain on district stations resulting from special events and would reduce special event overtime expenditures by as much as $1.1 million per year.

In addition, the Board of Supervisors should consider a policy option that would improve the Police Department"s ability to recover the cost of providing police coverage at certain types of special events, thereby generating as much as $650,000 in additional revenue to the City annually.

Recommendations

The Board of Supervisors should:

Costs and Benefits

There would be no costs associated with implementing the recommendations contained in this section.

Forming a special event unit under Field Operations Headquarters in accordance with the recommendations in this section would lessen the drain on district stations resulting from special events and could reduce special event overtime expenditures by as much as $1,109,304 per year.

Implementation of the policy option to amend the Administrative Code could generate additional revenues of up to $650,000 annually, which could be used to offset the Police Department"s cost of providing police coverage at certain types of special events.