A kidnapping investigation is among the items that have contributed to the New Westminster Police Department’s overtime tally in 2024.
At its September meeting, the police board received the latest report about the department’s overtime. (This report is regularly presented at the board to keep its members apprised of the status of OT.)
The overtime report showed that the NWPD had spent $567,457 on overtime as of Aug. 30, which includes overtime for sworn officers and civilian employees. The 2024 police budget included $901,000 for overtime, so $333,543 was remaining in the budget as of the end of August.
Acting Chief Const. Paul Hyland told the board that the police department requires overtime for several reasons. In addition to “prep-planned overtime” when the department knows there will be a “resource shortage,” he said the NWPD also encounters unplanned overtime.
“That is generally in major crime or street crime where we have a crime that happens after hours. Very challenging, obviously,” he said. “We just had a significant incident that the board is aware of, that we have done some media on; it was a kidnapping file that involved a significant expense given that it happened after hours.”
While the department does its best to mitigate costs associated with court, Hyland said there are times when overtime is required so staff can attend court.
“There are collective agreement provisions in there for what they get paid when they go to court on their days off,” he said. “I would say that is a smaller percentage of the overall overtime budget.”
Hyland told the board that there are differences in overtime among the different patrol watches in the NWPD.
“Sometimes that just comes down to staffing issues that we can’t plan for, whether it is sickness or illness or just staffing challenges in general,” he said.
All totalled, $470,265 of the money spent on overtime this year has been for sworn officers, with the remainder of the $567,457 being for civilian overtime. The report broke down the overtime costs of different sections of the police department, which included: patrol administration – $19,791; Patrol A platoon – $62,338; Patrol B platoon – $65,471; Patrol C platoon – $31,678; Patrol D platoon – $29,062; major crime – $139,785; forensic identification – $38,642; and street crime – $19,500.
Police board member Kelsi Wall questioned how the department is doing with its overtime now, compared to before it began implementing a backfill strategy that was introduced to address staffing challenges.
“In terms of how the overtime is doing versus pre-backfill strategy, I actually don’t have that comparison off the top of my head,” said Jacqueline Dairon, finance manager at the New Westminster Police Department. “I know this year has had different challenges with all the acting roles and positions. We have had a little bit of a different challenge this year than we would have had last year. I can come back to the board with the actual numbers.”
