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<\/p>\nThe Department of Public Safety shared that it has officially terminated the 12 remaining officers who were under investigation for incurring illegal overtime.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere 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\u2019s here at the administration division because everyone must come here to clock in through biometrics. Surprisingly, most of them didn\u2019t use biometrics and instead incurred overtime through manual write-ins,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, as of earlier this month, nine of the 12 terminated officers have appealed their termination with the Civil Service Commission.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Nine of the 12 have submitted their appeals to the Civil Service Commission. That\u2019s one of their rights as former employees of the government. So that appeal remains pending with the Civil Service Commission and until it\u2019s heard, then we will have updates. Our counsel is preparing our response to the appeal,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Last year, the transition team assigned to DPS found that the department requested approval for over 11,000 hours of overtime\u2014roughly one year and a half\u2019s\u2019 worth of regular work hours\u2014in just one pay period in December.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2014specific to certain sections.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s \u201cinner circle.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Clement Bermudes<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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