Cops engage in a practice called “slow rolling," “papering," or even "collar bombing" (to say nothing about good old fashioned time and attendance fraud[5])
They intentionally delay paperwork and administrative tasks past the end of their shift so as to extend into overtime hours. They accumulate additional pay for the extra time spent on duty, but th is question remains: what were they doing during their actual shift?
Generously, we might presume they were so busy fighting crime that they couldn't get back to their laptops to finish the paperwork, but it's hard to find the evidence that on-duty officers don't run personal errands or engage in liesure activities.
Frankly, I wish we could get more sousveillence of the police. They shouldn't be so opaque. We've seen countless instances of racketeering[3][4] and rape[1][2] by police. No wonder they can't find the time to file paperwork until after their "shift" ends!
> During day shifts, patrol officers were recorded as being available, on average, for approximately 27% of their shift. Although we cannot confirm the specifics of what officers physically did during such available time (a point that we revisit later), we assume based on operational experience that much of this time was spent conducting routine preventive patrols. [0]
The San Francisco and San Jose police are super correct in this fashion. The highest paid Bay Area city employees list is dominated by patrol officers.
They will engage in it in order to scam more out of their pension (it’s based on their average pay/hours for the last N years). This means everyone collaborates to give the guys retiring more overtime to pump up his numbers.
US society can't seem to even hold the police accountable for misconduct, rights violations, and literal crimes committed on the job. Overtime fraud seems to be pretty low on the priority list.
I agree: it seems like extant policies maintain systemic incentives to exploit the system but too much leeway, perhaps, is afforded to individual officers in their discretionary use of time. Better recordkeeping might see greater adherence to well-intentioned policy.
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