L.A. County Sheriff Overtime Skyrockets With Staffing Shortages

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spent $458 million on overtime during the last fiscal year, a ballooning figure that department officials say is driven by rising vacancy rates, increasing labor costs and expanding responsibilities. County data show that the number of new deputies hired each year plummeted during the COVID-19 pandemic and has not fully recovered. At the same time, the number of deputies leaving the department rose, returning to pre-pandemic levels only last year, the Los Angeles Times reports. With more people leaving the department than joining it, by March 1,461 of the agency’s roughly 10,000 deputy jobs sat empty, and an additional 900-plus were held by people out on leave. Those who remain are left to pick up the slack, some working dozens of hours of forced overtime each month. Last year, deputies worked more than 4.3 million hours of overtime. “I cannot tell you how proud I am of our employees stepping up to the plate,” said Sheriff Robert Luna. “This is not on them. They are literally doing the work of thousands of more employees who are not available.” Richard Pippin, president of the Association of Los Angeles Deputy Sheriffs, the union that represents rank-and-file deputies, worried about the effect on public safety. “In 35 years, I’ve never seen things this bad. Deputy morale is at rock bottom due to all the forced overtime,” he said. “Operations, training, and recruitment are all suffering due to this crisis. Anyone who has ever had to call 911 knows what short staffing can mean during an emergency.”

With a budget proposal for the next fiscal year that includes no cost-of-living raises for county employees, Pippin fears the situation could grow worse. Yet some oversight officials and attorneys question whether the department really needs to hire more deputies or require so much grueling overtime. There are far fewer inmates to care for in the jails than there once were, and inspectors have repeatedly found jailers sleeping on the job or watching movies and inappropriate videos. Melissa Camacho, an American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California attorney, represents inmates in two long-standing class-action lawsuits over conditions and abuse in the department's jails. She suggested the agency needs an outside look at staffing levels, especially in county lockups. In January 2021, there were 9,937 sworn deputies. By the start of this year, there were 8,785 — a nearly 12% drop. That’s a sharp contrast to small and medium-size departments elsewhere, which the Police Executive Research Forum says now employ more officers overall than they did at the start of 2020. With fewer people able to work, the sheriff department’s overtime costs skyrocketed. In the 2020-21 budget year, the department spent $180 million on overtime. That figure rose to $297 million the following budget year, and $397 million the year after that before reaching $458 million last budget year.