One Oakland police officer made $490,000 in overtime. The city can’t find records detailing much of what he did

This story was produced in partnership with the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley Journalism. For five years now, Oakland has struggled with immense budget deficits. The city’s most recent financial forecast shows budget gaps hovering around $120 million each year until 2030, forcing major cuts to spending unless the city finds new revenues. One major source of overspending in the city is the police department. By far the most expensive city service, the Oakland Police Department’s $386 million budget this year is about 19% of Oakland’s total spending. And each year, OPD has come under scrutiny for its runaway overtime spending, routinely blowing past its approved levels by millions of dollars. Last fiscal year, the Department spent over $55 million on overtime. Thirty-one million of this was over budget. According to Huy Nguyen, president of the Oakland Police Officers Association — the city’s police union — OPD’s ongoing staffing shortage is driving overtime. “At this staffing level, more officers will be forced to work excessive overtime, which in turn will accelerate attrition,” Nguyen said in a statement. “We cannot meet the needs of our community without forcing officers into more shifts.” It is true that OPD is severely understaffed by hundreds of officers. Mayor Barbara Lee is attempting to shrink the staffing gap, with plans to increase the number of officers. But historical data throws into question whether increasing staffing will rectify OPD’s chronic overtime overspending. A recent report by several civilian city unions found that over the past 15 years, even when department staffing increased, overtime continued to go up. From 2011 to 2024, staffing increased by nearly 9%. Over the same period, overtime went up by almost 200%. Recent financial pressures have caused the city to lay off scores of civilian employees and freeze spending across a range of programs. Meanwhile, the number of police officers bringing in six-figure overtime packages rose dramatically. In 2021, 58 officers were paid over $100,000 in overtime. By the end of 2024, the number of officers paid this much for overtime nearly tripled to 169. And the number of officers making over $200,000 in overtime more than quadrupled from six to a total of 27 over the same period. The amount an officer gets paid working overtime is determined in a formula agreed to in the police union’s contract with the city. This is generally about 1.5 times their normal pay. One officer’s earnings illustrate just how lucrative overtime can be for some OPD employees. Lieutenant Timothy Dolan, a 26-year veteran who leads the traffic unit and serves as vice president of the OPOA police union, was paid $493,247 in overtime in 2024. Combined with his salary and other pay, this netted him a $711,000 paycheck, making him OPD’s highest-paid employee — a title he’s held for several years now. His pay was almost double that of the chief of police and nearly three times the mayor’s paycheck. His total compensation, including pension and healthcare benefits, was $879,000. Some of the OPD officers who earned the highest in overtime in 2024 are also leaders in the city’s police union. OPOA President Huy Nguyen was paid $256,000 for overtime, putting his total pay at $473,000. Credit: Screenshot courtesy of opoa.org Dolan’s pay package raises questions about how OPD documents and approves overtime, and about whether the department is spending this money wisely. In Dolan’s case, he earned at least $100,000 in overtime — and possibly far more — solely by reviewing paperwork for traffic collisions, records reveal. The paperwork for Dolan’s overtime also reveals that OPD failed to document almost half of the overtime hours he worked, making it impossible to determine what he was doing much of the time. Dolan spent over 800 hours of overtime in 2024 reviewing collision reports — the equivalent of about five months of work in a normal full-time job. This was particularly expensive for the city because Dolan, due to his rank, is near the top of OPD’s salary scale. Spreading out the work among other officers during normal shift times could have been cheaper. “It’s an example of continued poor leadership and utilization of resources on the part of the Oakland Police Department,” said Cat Brooks, founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project, an Oakland-based nonprofit. “There’s no explanation or justification for why this particular officer would be doing that, making that kind of money.” OPD spokesperson Paul Chambers said in recent emails that Dolan is the agency’s “subject-matter expert on collisions.” He leads the department’s traffic team, but has continued to review the reports due to low staffing. Asked about the massive amount of overtime he logged in 2024, Dolan justified his work, saying it’s a service to the city that can generate revenue, and that the overtime hours are necessary because of OPD’s understaffing. “Reviewing and submitting the collision reports is a service we provide to the people we serve,” said Dolan in a statement. “Finalizing reports in a timely manner will help resolve service complaints, as we have previously been backlogged in our reviews due to staffing constraints.” Chambers, too, said the department has been working to clear its backlog of collision reports, a task it had not completed as of November. City records also raise questions about the hours many OPD officers are logging. We asked OPD to provide us with all of the documentation necessary to track Dolan’s overtime hours worked in 2024. This included his timecard, which shows the overtime hours he billed during each two-week pay period. We also requested copies of Dolan’s “overtime worked forms,” which are documents that officers are required to fill out whenever they work overtime. The forms describe in detail the dates and hours Dolan worked, as well as the specific activities he spent his time on. In Dolan’s case, the paperwork describes an officer who worked numerous consecutive and lengthy days to the extent that fatigue and safety could have become issues. “I don’t have a problem with [reviewing collision reports] on overtime, assuming the overtime is not absurd,” said former City Administrator Dan Lindheim, who teaches public policy at UC Berkeley. “But then the question is, when it gets to be elevated hours of overtime, then how does that affect the performance of the officer during the regular shift?” 23-hour workdays, working 19 days in a row, and other astonishing schedules In 2024, Dolan logged an eye-popping amount of overtime — 3,304 hours, records reveal. This was on top of the 1,938 hours he worked as part of his normal shifts, for a total of 5,242 hours. That’s the equivalent of more than two and a half full-time jobs. Some work stretches were seemingly superhuman, according to the records OPD provided us. On July 9, Dolan reported he worked 23 hours. The next day, he worked 16 hours, and for the following three days, he worked 15 hours each. “It strains credulity,” said Lindheim. “Ultimately, I don’t think there are enough hours in the day to bill this much overtime…. It doesn’t seem to pass the laugh test.” After providing us with an emailed statement for this story, Dolan did not respond to repeated requests for an interview. We sent him and OPD spokesperson Paul Chambers a list of questions and provided the findings from this story, including the numbers we pulled from his overtime documents; they did not respond. Dolan’s overtime records raise concerns about how he, or any officer, can safely and effectively do their job without taking time to rest; he didn’t respond to questions about that. “Truck drivers are only allowed to drive so many hours in a day for safety reasons,” said Julian Ware, vice president for IFPTE Local 21, a union that represents civilian city employees and which has been critical of OPD’s use of overtime. “I don’t think it should be any different for sworn officers who are carrying guns, tasers, and pepper spray, and driving vehicles. It’s a tremendous amount of responsibility that they have.” “There’s so much research and data just in general about sleep deprivation and safety,” said Brooks. “It also impacts your irritability, your mood, mood swings.… How are you treating Oaklanders that you come in contact with? There’s no way that you’re having capable or competent judgment.” OPD’s overtime policy says that due to the city’s budget problems and concerns about officers’ wellness, “overtime worked must be minimized, controlled, and used only as absolutely necessary.” The policy mostly describes the rules that apply to overtime when officers are required to work extra hours by their supervisors. The policy also says officers are supposed to take at least one full day off each week. However, the city auditor’s office has identified thousands of violations of the policy in past years. Dolan routinely exceeded this limitation, public records reveal. In one stretch, according to his Overtime Worked Forms, he worked at least 19 days in a row — and Dolan worked 15 hours or more on all but two of these days. The department didn’t respond to questions about whether Dolan was authorized to do this. Hundreds of OT hours spent reviewing collision reports Although more than a dozen OPD officers are trained and authorized to review collision reports, Dolan is one of only two who actually handle most of the reviews, according to Chambers. Dolan spent at least 815 hours reviewing the reports in 2024. From the available records, Dolan spent hundreds of hours more reviewing collision reports than completing any other overtime task. Chambers did not respond to questions clarifying whether any officers other than Dolan are authorized to use overtime to review the reports. Dolan’s rank makes his overtime particularly expensive. Dolan served as a Sergeant in 2024, giving him a base salary of about $163,000 — near the top of OPD’s salary scale.