DPS fires 12 officers accused of illegal OT
The Department of Public Safety shared that it has officially terminated the 12 remaining officers who were under investigation for incurring illegal overtime.
In a press conference yesterday, DPS Commissioner Clement Bermudes announced that as of last month, DPS has terminated the 12 remaining officers of the initial 28 who were under investigation over illegal overtime.
“From the 28, as it further developed, some were reinstated, some resigned, and that left the department with 12 officers under investigation. Unfortunately, we lost the remaining 12 this past month, we terminated them from the Department because the allegations against them were substantiated,” he said.
Bermudes shared that after further investigation into the 12 officers, DPS alleges that it was proven that these officers managed to accrue illegal overtime hours by manually writing in their hours instead of clocking in using biometrics.
“There were past practices that allowed that OT and those practices were unofficial time keeping which is illegal. The department has only one official timekeeper and that’s here at the administration division because everyone must come here to clock in through biometrics. Surprisingly, most of them didn’t use biometrics and instead incurred overtime through manual write-ins,” he said.
Bermudes said he has also addressed this practice and has made it a requirment for all officers to clock in through biometrics and if they missed their time to clock in, officers are now required to write directly to the commissioner explaining how this happened.
“One of the new policies I have instituted to address that is by requiring everybody to use the biometrics and anybody who does not must write me a letter justifying why they failed to clock in through biometrics,” he said.
Meanwhile, as of earlier this month, nine of the 12 terminated officers have appealed their termination with the Civil Service Commission.
Commenting on the recently filed appeals, Bermudes said these officers have the right to do so as former government employees. DPS, for its part, will be preparing its response.
Nine of the 12 have submitted their appeals to the Civil Service Commission. That’s one of their rights as former employees of the government. So that appeal remains pending with the Civil Service Commission and until it’s heard, then we will have updates. Our counsel is preparing our response to the appeal,” he said.
Last year, the transition team assigned to DPS found that the department requested approval for over 11,000 hours of overtime—roughly one year and a half’s’ worth of regular work hours—in just one pay period in December.
More specifically, the transition report noted a whopping 11,127.25 overtime hours were requested for the pay period from Dec. 4, 2022, to Dec. 17, 2022.
In addition, the transition team also stated that upon review of timesheets and OT requests from January 2022 to January 2023, it found that DPS had been paying out excessive OT accruals for the same group of officers, some higher-ranking officers and certain lower ranking ones as well—specific to certain sections.
The transition team found that, of the over 11,000 hours in overtime, about 4,000 OT hours, roughly about five-and-a-half months of regular hours, were requested for 40 officers who were allegedly part of former DPS commissioner Robert Guerrero’s “inner circle.”
Clement Bermudes
