Phoenix Police Overtime Outran Its $122M Safety Net
Summary
Phoenix budgeted $45.3 million for police overtime in fiscal 2024-25 and set aside $77.0 million more in savings from 470 unfilled sworn officer positions to cover any overrun. The Police Department spent $98.6 million on overtime anyway -- 217% of the budgeted amount, and $12.2 million more than that combined cushion could absorb -- after the city's own auditor had already found the department could not verify officers actually worked the overtime hours they billed.
A cushion built for exactly this, and still not enough
Phoenix budgets 3,125 sworn police positions, but the department has run hundreds of positions short for years⧉ -- 470 vacant General Fund officer slots by the fiscal 2024-25 accounting, worth $163,873 each in unspent salary and benefits, for $77,020,310 in total vacancy savings. That savings pool exists partly by design: because overtime is paid at 1.5 times the base rate plus fringe benefits, it costs more per hour than filling the seat would, so the city treats unfilled-position savings as a budgeted offset for the overtime worked to cover the gap. Combined with the $45,337,889 overtime budget itself, that gave the department $122,358,199 to work with for the year.
It wasn't enough. Actual sworn overtime alone, with fringe benefits included, came to $98,565,418 -- leaving $23,792,781 of the cushion. But the same vacancy-savings pool was also covering $36,005,718 in other obligations that fiscal year: $15,580,414 in prior-year budget additions approved between FY2021-22 and FY2023-24, a $19,400,000 transfer to keep the city's voter-approved Public Safety Specialty Funds solvent, and $1,025,304 in hiring incentives and referral bonuses. Net it all out, on the worksheet's own math, and the department finished $12,212,937 in the hole -- equal to about 75 more of the $163,873 vacant-officer packages it was counting on to cover the gap.
View data as table
| Budgeted overtime + vacancy savings (cushion) | $122,358,199 | $45,337,889 budgeted overtime + $77,020,310 vacancy savings |
|---|---|---|
| Actual overtime spent (with fringe) | -$98,565,418 | |
| Left after overtime | $23,792,781 | |
| Other obligations charged to the same pool | -$36,005,718 | $15,580,414 prior-year budget additions + $19,400,000 Public Safety Specialty Fund transfers + $1,025,304 hiring incentives |
| NET | -$12,212,937 | the worksheet's own bottom line: over budget, even after the vacancy-savings cushion |
The audit that found nobody could verify the hours
The overspend followed directly from a problem the City Auditor Department⧉ had already flagged. Its audit of sworn officer overtime, covering January 2022 through April 2024, found the department "lacked effective oversight to ensure compliance with City and Department policies": officers were paid for overlapping shifts, worked overtime while on leave, and in some cases logged more than 90 hours of overtime in a single week. Auditors compared extra-duty slips for 18 officers against the call-in and call-out data that was supposed to corroborate them; of 323 slips reviewed, 166 -- just over half -- had discrepancies, 109 in the recorded start time and 57 in the end time. The audit issued 13 recommendations, including supervisor training, automated checks, and clearer policy.
The department's one concrete policy fix -- updating Operations Order 3.4⧉ to cap scheduled overtime at 16 hours in a 24-hour period -- only reaches a minority of the problem: the auditor's own report notes scheduled overtime is just 28% of the department's total overtime. The rest is what the department's later staff report to the subcommittee calls mandatory overtime -- driven mainly by minimum-staffing requirements -- which makes up about 80% of the total⧉ and isn't touched by a scheduling cap at all, because it exists precisely because there aren't enough officers on a shift without it.
View data as table
| FY2020 | 24,356,887 | year ended June 30, 2020 |
|---|---|---|
| FY2021 | 28,306,531 | |
| FY2022 | 31,999,841 | |
| FY2023 | 55,241,308 | |
| FY2024 | 59,256,046 | up 143% from FY2020, per the report's own caption |
Staffing didn't catch up, and the tracking system hasn't either
That FY2024 figure -- $59,256,046, per the auditor's own chart -- was itself the end of a run the report says grew 143% over five years, from $24,356,887 in FY2020. The following fiscal year's $98,565,418 actual-overtime figure comes from a different worksheet, on a basis (General Fund, fringe-inclusive) the auditor's chart doesn't specify for its own numbers, so the two aren't stated here as one unbroken line -- but staffing didn't close the gap in between. As of August 2025, the department had 2,636 of its 3,125 budgeted sworn positions filled, leaving 489 vacant.
And the subcommittee's own staff report⧉ acknowledges the department still can't track overtime in real time: its current Overtime Tracking System, LOTS, is "highly reactive, overly manual, and post-event oriented," a limitation the report names alongside "ensuring supervisory accountability" as the two unresolved challenges to controlling overtime -- more than a year after the auditor's 13 recommendations. The same report notes the department "has also engaged with the City Auditor's office to review compliance with existing policies," which is a description of process, not of a closed gap.
- The vacancy-savings cushion built to cover overtime didn't cover it. $45,337,889 in budgeted overtime plus $77,020,310 in savings from 470 unfilled officer jobs gave the department $122,358,199 to work with; actual overtime and other obligations charged to the same pool left it $12,212,937 short, per the department's own worksheet.
- The department's own auditor had already found the control gap. A January 2022-April 2024 review found 166 of 323 sampled overtime slips didn't match officers' logged call-in and call-out times, and issued 13 recommendations -- while the department's real-time tracking system remains, in its own words, 'highly reactive, overly manual, and post-event oriented.'
- Staffing was still 489 officers short of budget as of August 2025, out of 3,125 budgeted sworn positions -- the same shortage the department cites as the main driver of the roughly 80% of its overtime that is mandatory, not discretionary, and therefore untouched by the 16-hour scheduled-overtime cap on Ops Order 3.4, which by the auditor's own account governs only the 28% of overtime that's scheduled in advance.
Figures are drawn from two City of Phoenix documents read in full: the City Auditor Department's Annual Report 2025 (PDF metadata dated Oct. 23, 2025, covering fiscal year 2024-25) and the Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee's Sept. 3, 2025 agenda packet, Item Nos. 4 and 5 (printed pages 757-763). Both were fetched directly from phoenix.gov and sealed via this outlet's own capture endpoint; an archive.org Save Page Now capture of the Annual Report also succeeded and is attached alongside the direct link. A blind adversarial verifier, working from the primary documents alone with no access to this draft, independently checked every itemized fact; see verification.json.
The $122,358,199 cushion, the $23,792,781 remaining after overtime, the $36,005,718 in other obligations, the $12,212,937 bottom line, the 217% budget-to-actual ratio, the roughly-75-officer equivalent of the overspend, and the 143.3% five-year growth check are this outlet's own arithmetic, reproducing figures the subcommittee's and auditor's own documents already total or caption -- methods and caveats are in analysis.json. The FY2020-FY2024 overtime-cost chart and the FY2024-25 actual-overtime figure come from two different documents that do not state whether they share the same accounting basis (General Fund only vs. all funds, fringe-inclusive or not); they are presented here as separate series, not summed or treated as one continuous run.
Sources(3) ▾
- City Auditor Department, City of Phoenix (Aaron Cook, City Auditor), Annual Report 2025 -- City Auditor Department, City of Phoenix (2025-10-23) — The primary document for the underlying overtime audit's findings: the January 2022-April 2024 audit period, the finding that the Police Department lacked effective oversight of sworn officer overtime, the 13 recommendations issued, the 323-slip discrepancy sample (p.3, 'Overtime Compliance - Police Department'), the FY2020-FY2024 Officer Overtime Costs chart and its stated 143% increase (p.3), and the department's own Ops Order 3.4 response capping scheduled overtime (p.3). Also source for confirming the City Auditor Department's Integrity Line fraud-reporting program exists and its FY25 case volume (p.6). phoenix.gov · original document
- City of Phoenix, Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee (submitted by Assistant City Manager Lori Bays and the Police Department), Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee Agenda Packet, September 3, 2025 -- Item No. 4, 'Police Department Overtime Use and Management Overview' and Item No. 5, 'Phoenix Police Department Recruitment, Hiring and Attrition Update' (2025-09-03) — The primary document for the FY2024-25 dollar reconciliation: the staff report text on p.757-759 (mandatory-vs-discretionary overtime shares, the Police Department's engagement with the City Auditor's office, the LOTS overtime-tracking system's acknowledged limitations, the 3,125 budgeted / 2,636 filled / 489 vacant sworn count as of August 2025) and Attachment C's worksheet on p.763 (470 vacant General Fund officers, $163,873 per-officer salary-and-benefit value, $77,020,310 in total vacancy savings, the $22,739,943 / $45,337,889 overtime budget without and with fringe, the $49,437,061 / $98,565,418 actual overtime spend without and with fringe, and the worksheet's own bottom line of $12,212,937 over). Also source for Attachment B's itemized $15,580,414 in prior-year budget additions covered by vacancy savings (p.762) and Attachment C's $19,400,000 Public Safety Specialty Fund transfer and $1,025,304 in hiring incentives/referral bonuses, also covered by vacancy savings. phoenix.gov · original document
- City Auditor Department, City of Phoenix, Report a Violation -- City Auditor Department Fraud Reporting / Integrity Line (2026-07-19) — Confirms the City Auditor Department's current public contact channel: 140 N. Third Avenue, Phoenix, AZ 85003; phone 602-262-6641; Integrity Line 1-833-666-4575; and an online reporting form at secure.ethicspoint.com. Used only to source cta.json -- not cited for any dollar figure in the body. phoenix.gov · original document
Comments
Always open. Logged-in readers can annotate paragraphs in place.
The Phoenix Police Department spent $98,565,418 on sworn officer overtime in fiscal year 2024-25, according to a budget worksheet the department's own fiscal staff presented⧉ to the City Council's Public Safety and Justice Subcommittee -- more than double the $45,337,889 the department had budgeted for overtime with fringe benefits included, and $12,212,937 more than that budget and $77,020,310 in savings from 470 unfilled officer jobs could absorb combined. The overspend followed an audit the City Auditor Department⧉ had already completed of the department's overtime, covering January 2022 through April 2024, which found the Police Department "lacked effective oversight to ensure compliance with City and Department policies" -- including 166 of 323 sampled overtime slips whose shift start and end times didn't match officers' own call-in and call-out records.