The problem is not getting paid overtime for time spent working wtf. The problem is being the fucking worst??
this post was submitted on 22 May 2025
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Okay, fuck it, I'm getting out of this software engineering thing, I'm moving to the US to become a cop. I think I'm white enough for Trump, definitely whiter than he is.
True heroes, these rich cops. Not like schoolteachers, who are suspicious villains and possibly freeloaders, am I right?
*sigh
Not incentivizing our teachers/academics/social workers but highly incentivizing cops is going to devastate our country's output soon.
We need to cap police OT. They are making off like bandits.
Best part is, they're either overreporting it, or they're legitimately dangerous to society from being so overworked in a job that already seems to put them on edge.
I have no quarrel with people being paid for their overtime (in fact, it would be shady for overtime to NOT be paid out), but I don't think 19 hours of overtime per week over the course of an entire year (or 20 if they take 2 weeks off a year) for police officers is OK. Tbh I don't think it's OK for anyone who doesn't earn dividends or bonuses based on company profits, but it's even less OK for police.
Think about a surgeon. We put peoples lives in their hands. We expect them to be preposterously educated, able to perform extreme tasks under significant duress, to maintain ongoing technical and specialized training, to prove that the training is effective, and they are compensated accordingly. If they fuck up, they can be held personally liable for their fuck ups. There are consequences to the career and its not a role to be taken on lightly.
Hear me out.
We raise the amount we pay cops to 1.5 million dollars a year... but.
No qualified immunity. It no longer exists (guess what? it already doesn't exist for military service members). Any crimes they commit, the consequences are 10x'd and they are no longer allowed to engage in public service, ever. They can be publicly executed for any crimes beyond misdemeanor. They have to pay for their own equipment. They have to carry liability insurance for any violations of civil rights which might occur in the line of performing their duties.
The minimum qualification is a PhD in constitutional law. They need to be able to run a 6 minute mile, do 100 push ups in 2 minutes, 200 sit ups in 2 minutes, and 80 burpees in 2 minutes. They need to be able to carry 120 lbs for 10 minutes up an incline. They need to be able to recite the US Constitution, the state constitution, and the local city and county charters where they are stationed. They are expected to have advanced knowledge of any and all laws they are expected to be enforcing. They have to undergo annual psychological, physical, technical, and legal reassessments to prove their suitability for the job; these reassessments are maintained as a part of public record.
We 10x the pay and we hire 1/10th the number of cops. It becomes a career path somewhere between than a doctor or a lawyer or an astronaut. Its not something a HS drop out should be able to consider as a career path.
Look, obviously, hyperbole. Or is it?
We are so bad about this across the board. Why is society so content to expect the worst from people like police and politicians?
Honestly, probably because we've been conditioned to get angry at the employees of the super rich rather than the hoarders themselves.
This is the way. I can’t tell you how much it hurts me when I see an obese cop.
Practicality-wise though, if the police have recruitment issues now though, finding recruits with a PhD will be impossible. People really overestimate how many PhD’s are out here in the wild.
1.5 million dollars a year.
Maybe I'm too easy to please but I'd be happier if they took the money that currently goes towards tanks and "how to shoot first" seminars and put it towards ongoing education for officers on law, de-escalation tactics, and critical thinking in stressful situations.
I mean, I agree entirely with the "abolish the police" movement. I don't think policing in the US is recoverable. Its rotten to the core. Its a remnant of slavery. In that sense I'm an abolitionist.
But I also think its a thing that "law enforcement" is a thing that will be expected to happen. So if you are going to abolish policing as we currently know it, you need to replace it with something different.
Replace it with what? Militsiya? Pretty much every country in the world calls their law enforcement "police" these days. I suppose there are some that have gendarmerie or carabinieri or similar, though those exist next to police rather than instead of them usually.
These questions aren't being asked in a vacuum: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/12/camden-policing-reforms-313750. Maybe ask a Camdenite? I'm sure we've got a few laying about.
Its not a hypothetical to dissolve a department of a government which is dysfunctional and rebuild it.
What about this, instead we just take that 1.5 mill a year and put it towards things that actual solve problems, rather than making sure we have the best and brights super soldiers doing traffic stops and taking notes on your break in.
Since we're engaging in fantasy, sure.
But I think you'll find no matter what you do, some version of a person whose role in society is to enforce the laws, a kind of "law enforcement", emerges.
The properties of that role can vary widely from society to society, but pretty much every society independently comes to the same conclusion, that the role is necessary, once the society determines a common and well structured code of conduct is necessary.
100% abolish the police. They are a corrupt institution which finds their roots in re-enforcing a slave culture. 100% let every prisoner free. The roots of the prison system in the US are the same as the police state.
But countries with no history of slavery have police forces and prison systems. They are an emergent property of large social systems. Society will re-invent the role. We might as well fill the niche in a manner we want, instead of a manner we dont want.
But countries with no history of slavery have police forces and prison systems. They are an emergent property of large social systems. Society will re-invent the role. We might as well fill the niche in a manner we want, instead of a manner we dont want.
I mean yeah, if you don't have means of enforcing law, the law becomes pointless, might as well abolish all laws.
And I mean that MIGHT be possible, but do we really want to test what it'd be like in a lawless society where it's probably going to be money and violence that decides who's right, kinda like now, but with no possibility of suing the people with money or violence, you could only respond with your own violence.
The idea that things devolve into a lawless society because a lack of police is absurdist reductionism.
Firstly, we already live in a lawless society; see any of the actions Trump has taken since January. Its just a matter of "for whom does the law apply?"
Second, and I posted this to your other response, the idea that we can't "abolish a police department and rebuild it into something that serves its intended purpose" is also absurdist, in at least that we have the counter-factual of it actually happening: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/12/camden-policing-reforms-313750
For a couple of teachers?
I don't understand what you mean.
For some reason my lemmy app glitched as I was scrolling and I was seeing this title above This post
It's impossible to work 3000 hours of overtime in a year. This is fraud. If that person is actually working those hours, then it's incompetence by the Sergeant above them allowing them to work that many overtime hours for no reason.
14.47 hour days to the maximum legal amount of days before days off. And working on holidays is time and a half or double time by default as well. Could be done. Not good, but not fraud.
The trick I read before is to arrest someone at the end of your shift, then you have to process them at overtime and possibly wait for a judge or something. They know the tricks to draw it out.
Of course why didn't I think of arresting someone just to get overtime? Probably because I'm not a fucking psychopath
Depending on internals it doesn't even necessarily need to be an arrest, just something that requires a report. My local PD apparently needs an incident report done within 12 hours of said incident taking place, this could be as simple as checking on a weird noise and finding a cat.
Sorry to inform you but your application to the police academy has been denied
The money is in police detail work And a lot of them are able to do it during their normal shifts. The person probably did legitimately log that many hours or near that many hours, the problem is that they were able to do it in the first place.
3151 hrs of overtime.
78.775 full-time 40 hour weeks there.
So assuming 2 weeks of vacation, he somehow managed to work 128.775 weeks in a year?
128.775/50 - let's see how many work weeks he had to work each week to get there - 2.5755
So each week he had to be working about 2.6 normal weeks, or about 103 hours a week.
Assuming he worked 7 days each week, he was doing 14.7 hour shifts every day of those 50 weeks of working 7 days with no breaks.
Hmm.
theres that doubletime, trippletime, quadrupletime and time and a half multipliers to factor in too. I think you for overtime past a 40 hour wk, past 8 hours day, on a holiday, with hazard pay you can pump it way way up. We should give the same to teachers.
52 weeks in a year. If he worked all 52 full time it’s 4000hrs, which means we’re talking 40+ weeks which most people do work. So yes it’s within range. Remember you don’t have to be awake and working to be considered on duty. Overnight work is still paid work In a lot of industries
At the end of the day we’re both speculating here. The larger point is that unfortunately a lot of this is legal, which is the entire problem. They can get away with this shit without any recourse.
Your definition of full time is incorrect. Full time is 40h/week, at 52 weeks per year that’s 2080 hours per year. 3000 hours of overtime puts the total at 5080, or 19.5 hours per day.
That’s by working 5 days a week, every week, no vacation nor PTO nor sickness.
It is fraud
I think you are a bit off with your assumptions. In California, overtime is earned either when you work more than 40 hours per week, OR more than 8 hours a day.
So technically he could have for example worked three 24 hour shifts in a week, which would equal three 8 hour shifts (24 regular time hours) and three 16 hour overtime blocks (48h OT). 48 * 52 = 2,496 OT. He could have even been sleeping and on call while working that OT.
Definitely poor management but not guaranteed fraud. The math is more nuanced.
You’re right i used the 78 figure for some odd reason.
anyway again the sad reality is this is all probably legal, maybe grey. And we are both still speculating as to the numbers and how OT works for them.
Cops at my hospital are all in overtime. They bring in inmates for psych holds/psych eval and then supervise them hands-off for the entire hospital stay. Easy money. Then the really entitled ones try to act pushy and basically want us to give the patient shots for unjustified reasons. Just so they can sit and watch movies without being bothered.
He surely did work 11,5hours everyday additionaly to his regular shift 🥴
That "No Tax on Overtime" pitch makes perfect sense now.
Yes especially when Project 2025 also wants to reclassify what counts as overtime hours to make it unachievable for most.
No wonder that cop in Parks & Recreation moved to San Diego.
Since you can be 'too smart' to be a cop, can we get them to remove the america's finest from their cars and gear? Clearly that is no longer the case.
Now do California Highway Patrol.