A blue wooden sign with golden engraved letters reads "City of Syracuse, Dept. of Police" on a green lawn outside of the police station downtown. A blue sky shines down on the scene.
Syracuse Police headquarters on South State Street in downtown Syracuse. Credit: Julie McMahon | Central Current

The Syracuse Police Department has burned through the $5.4 million it budgeted for overtime this year in eight months, Chief Joe Cecile confirmed to Central Current.

The department has so far spent about $50,000 more than it was budgeted to spend in the 2024 fiscal year, with four months to go, Cecile said. 

The overtime spending comes just one year after the department slashed its overtime budget by 20%, the largest cut to budgeted police overtime in a decade. At the time, Cecile pitched the cuts as part of a citywide effort to find places to reduce spending. 

Cecile a year ago said the department planned to meet the leaner overtime budget with a number of changes, including going to fewer car crashes and diverting non-emergency calls. Those savings have come slower than Cecile expected, he said. The chief also believed the department’s new schedule, implemented in September 2023, would reduce overtime. 

“I said to everybody, from the mayor to the deputy mayor, even to Pat Hogan when he asked me, ‘Can you do this, everything you do, with less money?’ I said to everybody, ‘I don’t know, we’ll try.’” 

This marks at least the 21st time in 22 years the department has outspent its overtime budget. The only year the department came in under budget was the 2020-21 fiscal year, the first full fiscal year after the Covid-19 pandemic began. 

Since 2001, the department has outspent its overtime budget by an average of more than $1.2 million per year, or about $25.7 million in total. Neither of those numbers include the last two fiscal years because final overtime data has not been made available for the 2022-23 year, and the 2023-24 fiscal year is still in progress. 

SPD’s overtime spending has long been a point of contention with Common Councilors and the community. Councilor Chol Majok, the chair of the council’s public safety committee, called the spending concerning. Majok said the council will be looking for more information about whether the department’s new schedule has saved the department money. 

“As legislators, we can yell all day and say do it this way and do it that way,” Majok said. “But what it comes down to is internal management. It has to come from the administration making it a priority and the police department making it a priority because it comes down to the day to day of really paying attention to what is necessary and what is not necessary.”

Why the SPD missed the mark

One critical reason the police department didn’t stay under the $5.4 million overtime mark is that the department’s new schedule didn’t lead to the savings Cecile expected.

Last year, the department signed a new, five-year contract with the Syracuse police union. Officers’ schedules changed. They now work 10-hour shifts instead of the old eight-hour shifts. 

The new schedule was designed to have more overlap between shifts, meaning there are peak hours when more officers are patrolling. 

Cecile expected the overlap to allow the department to reduce overtime the department typically racked up for training. The department fills vacancies created by the need for training with overtime shifts. Cecile believed the overlapping shifts would largely reduce the need for backfilled shifts. 

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But the department failed to account for the six extra hours it would be paying officers each day because of the overlap. The new schedule started in September 2023. Cecile said the department didn’t adjust to stop the overtime spending until at least four months after the new schedule started. 

Ultimately it found that the bulk of calls came during overlap periods, meaning the department needed fewer officers at other times. To stem the spending, the department reduced the minimum number of officers it requires to patrol and moved other officers to day shifts to reduce the need for overtime. 

“In the long run, I think it will save money,” Cecile said of the new schedule. “But in the short run, it didn’t.”

Cecile said the changes helped reduce the department’s overtime spending. While Cecile provided preliminary numbers to back that claim in an interview, the department later declined to provide official numbers until at least one more pay period lapsed. 

The chief also cited other reasons the department surpassed its overtime budget. The department had pre-approved time off that Cecile said forced it to spend more money to fill shifts with overtime. 

Officers took on an increase in specific details that required overtime, like what Cecile referred to as the department’s “dangerous panhandling detail” and a foot patrol in Armory Square.

The department also has 42 fewer officers than it is budgeted for, though the department has in the past missed its overtime budget even with more officers. 

What it means

Cecile said the department will likely request about $7 million be budgeted for overtime costs during the next budget cycle, the highest amount since the 2016-17 budget and a return to budgeted levels before the most recent 20% cut. 

While the department has met its budgeted amount for this fiscal year, it will keep spending on overtime, as it has for the last two decades. 

City auditor Alex Marion said the trend of police overtime spending over the last two decades indicates poor forecasting or execution of the budget. He suggested the department should provide regular reports on its overtime to city administration and his office. 

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“We should not be in a position where we are going halfway through the year needing to bail out our overtime fund,” Marion said. 

The council will request more financial information about the department’s new schedule, Majok said. This year’s use and the historical use of overtime are concerning, Majok said. 

Councilor Pat Hogan, who is on the public safety committee, said he is OK with the overtime spending because he expects the department to come in under its total budget. 

Last April, when the department slashed its overtime budget, Hogan predicted the department would go over its overtime allocation but that it would be nullified by the department coming in under budget on its salary costs. 

Majok and Marion, however, see a larger problem city-wide with the management of overtime. 

In the last year, the city has undertaken a search for more revenue to find ways to fund an ever-increasing budget. 

“The future of our city, financially, needs to really be managed better,” Majok said. “Our tax base is shrinking, we’re not generating, revenue-wise, enough to cover the rising costs. It is a problem. For me it is a big problem.”

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Chris Libonati is the managing editor of Central Current. He is a founding editorial member of the organization and was hired as Central Current's first reporter. He previously worked at the Syracuse Post-Standard...