For D.C. Metropolitan Police Department sergeant Tony Giles, working overtime is a full-time job of its own.

In the budget year ending September 30, 2022, Giles billed the city for 2,735 extra work hours, which — on top of a regular 40-hour workweek — is equivalent to working a 13-hour day, every single day, for all 365 days of the year.

This harrowing workload was so lucrative that Giles out-earned the highest paid officials in city government in fiscal year 2022. His total compensation was greater than the publicly reported salaries of every other city employee, including the police chief and D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.

Giles, whose base salary was $114,000 that year, ultimately took home $361,000 in total pay.

The 33-year MPD veteran has doubled his base salary every year since at least 2014 — the earliest year with publicly available data on the D.C. Council’s website. And this year, he surpassed his 2022 total; as of the end of July, with a month-and-a-half remaining in the 2023 budget year, he’d already earned $249,577 in overtime and other bonus pay.

While Giles was the department’s highest earner, he was far from the only officer in the District significantly padding his wallet by banking overtime hours. He was one of 41 MPD employees who earned more than $100,000 in overtime and other extra pay in fiscal year 2022, according to data obtained and analyzed by DCist/WAMU and the Investigative Reporting Workshop. Through the end of this July, 44 MPD employees had already earned at least that much in extra pay in the most recent budget year.

Spreadsheets detailing MPD overtime hours for each of the past five fiscal years, obtained via public records request, show that officers routinely record 14- to 18-hour work days, in some cases breaking MPD policies on overwork. Department rules prohibit officers from working more than 18 hours during a 24 hour period or more than 98-hours over the course of a week unless they receive a special waiver.

“You don’t want to be dealing with a cop on hour 15. I can promise you that,” says Chris Magnus, D.C.’s Deputy Auditor for Public Safety and a former police chief in multiple cities. “For anybody, 16 hours [or more] is craziness.”

It’s fairly rare for most MPD officers to actually violate these department rules, city data show. But DCist/WAMU and IRW’s analysis shows that the department’s top earners have done so more frequently. Giles has crossed the 98-hour threshold in at least 34 pay periods in the past five years — more than any other MPD employee during that time frame, according to city data. In fiscal year 2022 alone, he appeared to work above the weekly limit in 40% of pay periods. Gregory Jackson, the department’s second-highest earner, went beyond the 98-hour rule in at least 19 pay periods over the past five years. (MPD did not comment on these apparent violations by publication time, saying they were still actively reviewing the data).

It’s far more common, however, for the top earners to stay just inside department limits while routinely logging more than 50 hours of overtime (and 90 hours of total time) a week. For example, city records show that Alfreda McLaughlin, an officer in the Youth and Family Services division, came within ten hours of the 98-hour limit half of the time in fiscal year 2022, and like Giles, averaged 13 hours of work a day, every day, for the entire year.

(McLaughlin referred requests for comment to MPD’s central press office).

City data also shows just how unevenly this overtime is distributed in MPD. Many employees are clocking fairly routine work weeks, while the top 10% of earners took home about 40% of MPD’s overtime spending in fiscal year 2022.

MPD spokesperson Paris Lewbel said that any timesheet showing an officer has worked more than 18 hours in a 24-hour period is flagged for review, but as of publication the city had not fulfilled reporters’ public records requests seeking the results of those audits. “Overtime is closely monitored and requires approval from the member’s chain of command,” said Lewbel, who added that the department has found “no evidence of time fraud” among its top overtime earners.

The department does appear to track its members’ use of overtime, even uncovering several instances of confirmed fraud. MPD disciplinary documents leaked after a hack in 2020 show that one of MPD’s top overtime earners in FY22 was suspended in 2015 for simultaneously holding an unauthorized full time job as an assistant fire chief in Prince George’s County. (MPD declined to comment on the matter, citing its policy of not commenting on personnel records). More recently, a D.C. police union vice chairman pleaded guilty to fraud, admitting that he billed MPD for hours he spent working a security job at Whole Foods.

But one former employee with MPD’s internal affairs division said that understaffing has severely limited the department’s ability to monitor how much overtime its officers are accumulating. “Who has the time to even micromanage that…” said the employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of professional repercussions.“…when we’re just trying to breathe.”

Lewbel acknowledged that the department is “concerned about officers having to work significant amounts of overtime and we want to ensure our officers have sufficient relief” but also said that many of those recording the most overtime hours work for elite units or have specific skills that make heavier workloads necessary. He said that the department hopes to successfully recruit additional officers to reduce the overtime load — efforts that come at a time when police departments across the country have reported staffing shortages. City records show that this year MPD is operating with about 700 fewer officers than a decade ago.

Officials with the union that represents MPD officers did not respond to requests for comment on the findings. However, 15 current and former MPD officers and officials — many speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional consequences — agreed with the department’s explanation that such massive overtime hauls are unlikely the result of fraud, but rather due to officers who eagerly volunteer to pick up extra shifts.

But many also agreed that such overwork is not safe for officers themselves or for the public.

“When you start working officers too much, it affects their judgment, affects their situational awareness,” said Steve O’Dell, a decorated former MPD lieutenant who retired in 2003. O’Dell said officers who work excessive overtime tend to become either “overreactive”: quick to interpret a situation as a threat — or “underreactive”: less likely to respond quickly to potential threats. “Traffic accidents go up, injuries go up, and citizens’ complaints go up because you’ve got an officer who’s fatigued, worked too much and he may not respond correctly under a stressful situation.”

Research backs up his analysis; studies have found that police fatigue and overwork are associated with a host of dangers to the public. One such study found that when police officers get less sleep, they are more likely to exhibit racial bias. A 2017 audit of the King County sheriff’s office in Washington State found that working four additional hours of overtime in a week increased the odds of a “negative incident” by 12% — including an accident, a use of force, an ethics violation, and complaints about professionalism.

It’s difficult to determine why, exactly, each of the 40 officers making more than $100,000 in overtime pay is working so many hours, in part because MPD — citing officers’ right to privacy — has declined to provide more detailed information about officers’ work schedules.

Additionally, the city has not conducted an in-depth time utilization study of MPD, which would offer more insight into how officers are spending their time; D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson’s office currently has one such study in progress.

However, MPD does provide the D.C. Council with a list of the 25 employees who earn the most in overtime pay each year, which includes their ranks and division assignments.

Those lists show that during the last three years, as the District has seen a surge in killings — including a 33% increase in homicides this year — at least a few homicide detectives have been among MPD’s top 25 overtime earners each year. Historically, detectives are among the highest overtime earners on the force. Former officers and detectives who spoke with DCist/WAMU noted that these roles require working around the clock — and the homicide detectives’ extra hours largely come from working to solve cases, not from signing up for extra overtime.

But over the same time frame, the department’s highest overtime earners are more likely to be members of the Special Operations Division (SOD) than they are detectives working on criminal investigations. Officers from SOD, which make up around 18% of the sworn force, appeared more frequently than officers from any other division on the department’s list of top 25 overtime earners in each of the last three years.

SOD is charged with staffing events and demonstrations, and does other kinds of specialized police work like assessing bomb threats or responding to barricade situations, which means that opportunities to pick up overtime shifts abound. In addition to Giles, SOD is also home to the department’s second highest salary earner: Jackson, a sergeant who brought in nearly $220,000 in overtime pay in fiscal year 2022. (Most of the overtime these two sergeants earned was funded by either the federal government — which reimburses MPD for its help with protests and presidential motorcades — or private entities that paid MPD for traffic control or security.)

A few SOD officers also have skills unique enough that they’re the only person who can be called upon to respond to certain situations — like top earner Terry Thorne, a sergeant in the Major Crash Investigations Unit of SOD, who brought in $236,000 in total compensation in fiscal year 2022, $121,000 of which was overtime pay. While Thorne did not respond to requests for comment, former MPD officers told DCist/WAMU he is the officer likely to be called in to supervise investigations of serious traffic crashes. Similarly, these officers said, bomb technicians and members of the K9 unit are also often called upon to conduct security at events.

“I can tell you with the bomb technicians and the bomb dogs, you have so many requests for bomb sweeps in the city,” said one former SOD officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect his privacy, who added that often at big stadium events, “they have a bomb dog there to screen all the cars that go into that building.”

Lewbel, the MPD spokesperson, noted that both 2020 and 2021 were years that saw large protests across the District — among them demonstrations against police violence, a series of far-right gatherings that culminated in the January 6 insurrection, and a trucker convoy that circled the city for weeks — and that the number of events requiring MPD staffing has spiked as the city has emerged from lockdowns initially in place during the COVID pandemic. “The number of specialized events coming out of the pandemic has resumed pre-pandemic levels,” he said.

Former officers note that the department is wary of understaffing a large scale event, and as a result, SOD officers are able to log significant overtime hours — whether they are ultimately needed or not — without pushback from the department brass.

“No department wants to get caught with their pants down, you know, so to speak,” said Scott Earhardt, who retired from SOD’s events division last year.

But analysis shows the amount of overtime pay being logged by SOD officers cannot be completely explained by these large-scale public events — the unit’s officers routinely record 14-to-18-hour days on their timesheets throughout the year, even during weeks without such massive public gatherings.

Former officers say this is because unfilled positions in SOD have left fewer officers to handle the team’s wide range of responsibilities — from blocking off streets for Marine Corps Marathon or the Giant National Barbecue Battle, to manning motorcades for the President and First Lady, to conducting bomb sweeps prior to major events. As of September 2023, there were 10 fewer sworn officers employed by SOD than five years ago.

Former MPD detective Ucrania Paniagua-Santana, who retired in June after 25 years with the department, said she saw firsthand how stretched thin the SOD had become. At various times, during recent years, she said, SOD leadership attempted to recruit detectives to help staff presidential movements — something she said she’d “never” seen before. (An MPD spokesperson said that some special events require staffing from additional bureaus).

“They were pulling us [for these extra assignments], but also want[ed] our caseload done and wanted] to make sure our cases [were] closed,” she said, adding that the problem was especially acute between 2020 and 2022.

SOD managers have also long fostered a culture that valorizes extreme hours and overtime, former MPD employees say.

Former SOD officer Larry, for example, recalled that he received lower marks on a performance evaluation about 14 years ago because he wasn’t signing up for enough voluntary overtime. (Lewbel said MPD had no evidence to support this claim, emphasizing that voluntary overtime is just that — voluntary.) Larry declined to publicly share his last name because he now works for the federal government and did not have permission to speak with the media.

“There’s a lot of pressure on the higher up officials of SOD to get people to work overtime. They cannot come up short,” he said. There was “definitely a culture of, ‘Oh yeah, [if] you’re one of those overtime guys, you’re part of the club.’”

There are other elements of SOD’s work that make it fruitful for officers chasing overtime. While some of the division’s work is intense — like policing massive demonstrations and trying to control unruly crowds — other SOD assignments are quite the opposite.

Officers blocking off streets for the presidential motorcade often have to report early for their posts, which allows them to rest — or, in some cases, catch some shut eye. Several former officers described high earners in SOD sneaking naps on the job, especially in their cars, though Lewbel says the department does not tolerate sleeping on the job.

No matter the cause of these overtime hours, the result, at least according to city payroll data, is work weeks that push the physical limits of a human body. Take, for example, SOD Sgt. Giles, who, like other top MPD overtime earners mentioned in this piece, referred requests for comment to a department spokesperson.

Records show he logged 117.5 work hours between May 21 and May 28 of this year — an average of 16.8 hours of work per day.

This kind of week is not even particularly extreme for Giles, one of the most consistent names on the department’s top earners list. During fiscal year 2022, timesheets show, he recorded working overtime hours on 296 days of the year.

Earhardt said he personally witnessed how extreme overtime affected colleagues of his in SOD.

“Let’s just say it was a lot of falling asleep at your desk for those officers and officials that would just pull in all the hours,” he said. “A lot of quick 30-minute catnaps here and there.”

This kind of schedule comes with its attendant risks, experts say.

Paniagua-Santana said that even working repeat 12-hour shifts — a relatively short day for some of MPD’s top earners — made it hard to stay awake during her drives home.

“Sometimes I would doze off,” she said. “[if] you continually do that over and over and over for so many hours, there’s no way that people won’t get in accidents.”

“You’re obviously more at risk for accidents in general — not just car accidents, but all kinds of accidents or errors, lapses in judgment,” said Colby Dolly, the director of policing programs at the National Policing Institute. “This is all well-established that fatigue will do that to you.”

In response to concerns about officers driving home after long shifts, Lewbel said that employees should immediately contact their supervisor, unit leadership, or union shop stewards if they need assistance. He also said that supervisors refer officers to MPD’s Employee Assistance Program if they need support. And officers can also take what’s commonly referred to as a “three day optional” and get three consecutive days off to deal with exhaustion.

Dolly said that departments should consider limiting officers’ overtime — and that there’s precedent for this in other professions.

There are nationwide work hour restrictions for commercial truck drivers, for example; they have to take a 10-hour break after they’ve been driving for 11 hours. Nuclear power plant operators aren’t allowed to work more than 16 hours in any 24 hour period (or more than 72 hours in a week).

In general, Dolly said, he thinks 14 hours is a “sound” daily limit for police that would allow employees time to commute home and still get a reasonable amount of sleep.

Other departments have also put in place stricter overtime limits (Baltimore, for example, instituted a 32-hour limit in 2020) or taken steps to try to limit risks for officers working long hours or overnight shifts.

In Nevada, for example, a police captain in the Henderson Police Department told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he saw three officers crash their squad cars and a number of other “fatigue-related near misses” in a two month span. The crashes inspired the department to start a new program where officers could take department-sanctioned naps on their lunch breaks, instead of sneaking them like before.

D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson said D.C., too, has successfully reduced overtime in the past. After an outcry about wasteful police overtime and potential fraud in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the city worked to reduce it. Much of the waste, Patterson said, came from officers billing the city for hours they spent in court — even when they weren’t actively working with prosecutors on cases.

“One of the reasons that the District was able to significantly reduce court overtime was because everybody agreed this was not a good use of public dollars to have officers sitting in a courtroom hallway, hour after hour after hour. And so they managed … the process a lot better,” Patterson said.

D.C. could do the same now, she said, with other forms of overtime — but people need to agree on which types of police overtime are problematic, or unnecessary, or unsafe.

“Maybe you don’t want to tell a homicide detective, ‘Don’t work this next six to eight hours’ if it’s right after a crime was committed. You want those hours because you want the crime solved,” she said. “So it’s just you have to identify where there is a problem.”

Ultimately, Magnus (the deputy auditor for public safety) believes excessive overtime is an “entirely solvable problem,” which can be fixed by strict limits on overtime hours. But, he added, there are many reasons not to solve it — like fear that police unions will push back against policies that restrict officer earnings, or the fear of contributing to morale problems.

Reining in overtime among the top earners may also mean distributing the hours more evenly across the force. But Magnus said this could be an increasingly difficult prospect for police departments — because these days, he says, younger officers value their work-life balance. It’s different than when he was a young officer, when he remembers everyone working overtime to make ends meet.

“Now the idea is, ‘No, we don’t want to do that. Policing isn’t the top priority in our lives. Our family is, or something else is,” Magnus said. “And I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, I’m just saying it’s a different dynamic. So what you get then is a relatively small cadre of cops that want to do this [overtime] all the time.”

For the small cadre of high earners, Magnus said, it’s a culture that’s difficult to change — and a battle he fought with limited success as the head of customs and border patrol, and as a police chief in other cities.

“Police culture is a fascinating and scary thing,” Magnus said. “Arguably, it drives a lot more behavior than management. And that’s the frustrating part sometimes. It really is.”

And it appears that a culture of working — with great financial benefit, but at significant potential cost to individual health and public safety — thrives among MPD’s cadre of officers logging the most hours.

Sergeant Timothy Evans, who made more than $170,000 in overtime and other extra pay last year, was disciplined in 2017 for using “harsh, profane” language with a resident. In documents appealing his discipline, Evans, who works in the First District, detailed his and the department’s mindset toward work.

“As a sergeant with the Mountain Bike Tactical Unit, I am always on the bike—rain, snow, freezing temperatures, scorching temperatures — because that’s what we expect of the officers,” he wrote. “I have not taken optional sick leave in 18 years … I was once struck by a vehicle and thrown from my bike. My officers told me that when they saw it, they thought I was dead. I fixed my bike, rode myself to the PFC [Police and Fire Clinic], and then did an overtime shift later that night.”