Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 374 Seattle Police Department employees made at least $200,000 last year

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattl...ade-at-least-200000-last-year-heres-how/

By Daniel Beekman
Seattle Times staff reporter
When the City Council started digging into the Seattle Police Department’s $409 million annual budget last month, having pledged to redirect much of the money to community solutions, a crucial truth quickly emerged.

To defund the police, like many Black Lives Matter protesters have demanded since an uprising began in May, the council would need to slash spending on personnel; more than 80% of SPD’s budget this year was allocated to employee compensation.

Council members took some initial steps Monday, voting for 2020 budget amendments meant to shrink Seattle’s force by up to 100 officers and reduce the wages of about a dozen commanders for the rest of this year. They also passed an amendment that would require SPD to file monthly reports about employees making more than $150,000 this year.

But what the council members have yet to review is an employee-by-employee breakdown of police pay. Those records, requested from City Hall by The Seattle Times, shed additional light on how the department spends taxpayers’ dollars.

The median gross pay among SPD’s more than 2,000 employees last year was about $153,000, not including benefits, with 374 employees grossing at least $200,000 and 77 making at least $250,000, according to a Times analysis.

Note: All employees, including civilians (such as parking officers and 911 dispatchers) and employees who worked less than full time or less than the full year, were included in that analysis. Median gross pay was higher among sworn employees (officers, sergeants, lieutenants and captains) and among employees who worked more hours. For example, the median for officers who worked at least 1,000 hours was $167,000.

Twenty employees — all of them officers, sergeants or lieutenants — grossed more money than police Chief Carmen Best in 2019, even though the department’s top boss had the highest base rate: $140 per hour.

The gross pay numbers cloak some details, because they combine regular and overtime pay; SPD uses overtime to staff emphasis patrols, sports events and other special events, such as parades and protests. It spent more than $34 million in overtime pay in 2019.

Last year’s gross numbers are also somewhat skewed, because members of the Seattle Police Officers Guild (SPOG) received lump-sum retroactive raises from 2015-2018, when they worked under an expired contract.

The retroactive payments help explain why SPD’s median gross pay rose from about $105,000 in 2017 and $104,000 in 2018 to $153,000 in 2019, and why 20 employees leapfrogged Best in gross pay from 2017 to 2019. The median retroactive payment for a SPOG member last year was $34,640.

The new contract SPOG signed with the city in 2018 included cost of living raises of 3% for 2015, 2016 and 2017, 3.65% for 2018 and 3.85% for 2019.

Mayor Jenny Durkan lobbied the council to approve the contract, touting the deal as an opportunity to secure reforms, such as body-worn cameras and a civilian inspector general, and also to reward and retain police officers who had gone several years without raises. The council voted 8-1; among current members, M. Lorena González, Teresa Mosqueda, Lisa Herbold and Debora Juarez voted yes, while only Kshama Sawant voted no.

The pay records requested by The Times demonstrate how exactly the dollars in the contract added up last year. Seattle shelled out almost $37 million in retroactive base pay and more than $7 million in retroactive overtime pay.

For example, SPD’s top earner was patrol officer Ron Morgan Willis, hired in 1995. He made $128,716 in base pay last year while racking up $214,544 in overtime pay, $33,628 in retroactive base pay and $37,656 in retroactive overtime pay. In total, he grossed $414,543 in 2019.

Willis is a patrol officer who also serves as an “adjunct trainer,” working with SPD’s training unit “on an overtime basis,” according to Kelsey Nyland, a spokesperson for Mayor Jenny Durkan.


SPD has added training sessions in recent years to comply with a 2012 court agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that required Seattle to curb excessive force and biased policing. But the city hasn’t added more officers to its training unit, Nyland said. Instead, SPD has relied on officers working overtime “to staff these shifts,” she said.

SPOG’s contract allows officers to work overtime while on vacation, the spokesperson added. An officer who works a 12-hour shift on a vacation day can receive 12 hours of overtime pay and eight hours of regular pay.

Provisions also allow cops in certain cases to be paid an hour of overtime for a short phone call or to be paid three hours of overtime for less actual work.


Willis was “not available for an interview at this time,” Sgt. Lauren Truscott, an SPD spokesperson, said in an email Thursday.

Reining in overtime

Willis wasn’t alone in piling up overtime. More than 160 SPD employees made at least $50,000 in overtime last year, not counting retroactive payments.

SPD’s annual overtime expenses have about tripled since 2006, and overtime hours worked have increased 53%, from about 260,000 to 398,000 hours, according to the department.

That’s a lot of coins for being paid to stand down.

Those are some serious pensions that will be paid out....unless they run out of money.

Wish I could log overtime like that!

I didn’t think about the pensions and associated legacy costs.

You ain’t scchitt’n.

I’m not at all a defund the police person, but those are some huge salaries. Maybe it needs trimming and better management.

Not bad. I was in the wrong business.

That's impressive.

Nice, and a full pension after 20 years?

, nah, think I’ll keep farming and really make the big bucks.....

Its the over time and probably vacation buy back that is where the big bucks come from. I'm guessing for the top patrol officer making 200k that crazy bastard doesn't have a life, or is soon to be divorced. Or they have some sort of b.s. racket going on.

Also the retroactive pay seems to be back pay from when the union agreement expired, I guess the city caved to that in arbitration? (I think unions are a racket in any profession).

I guess living in a liberal hell hole has its benefits. Go look what the avg pay is for a patrol officer is per state...(hint its usually 40k-60k, hardly a get rich quick plan)

If it costs twice as much to live there, than where Im at, 200k aint all that.

Licensed Professional Engineers don't make that much money with Texas department of Transportation. I'm talking guys with nearly 20 years experience and are over design groups. The average salary for a District Engineer is 181,205$ that I found on the internet. These men supervise several hundred to over a 1000 employees and have control over money more than gross economy of some countries.

$180,000 per year in Texas is like $2 million a year in Seattle.

cops are a gang overrated overstaffed overpaid not much different then BLM . being both tax parasites both want to kill and be above the law both want the public to bow to them both are lying thieves and both threaten violence if they dont get their way. BLM burning and looting cops saying crime rates will go up if defunded

I realize there is a difference in cost of living but 2 mill is way over the top. You can easily spend 350,000 to 500,000 on houses in Austin and nicer parts of the Metroplex.

Lennie: As usual YOU and jaguartz post these sometimes interesting "news articles" without posting YOUR opinion/comment/assessment!
I could NOT, give afuck less, what some communist leaning "newspaper" in the formerly once great city of Seattle writes!
I simply couldn't.
I would like to hear what YOU have to say about this but I am beginning to wonder if YOU are smart enough to decipher what is going on there with those "high" salaries?
First off the exorbitant amount of overtime PAY leads me to the obvious conclusion that the Seattle Police Department is grossly understaffed!
It has been under-staffed since I left there in 1998!
So figger that in to your figgerin if'n you are smart enough to try that!
Then figger in to your figgerin that the Seattle Police Department/Officers went for 6 or 7 years without a contract and got NO raises in salary/pay or benefits for those 6 or 7 years!
So once a raise was OK'ed by the city council and the mayor that raise was then "retroactively" figgered in and paid in the year that is being "highlighted" by the communist press in Seattle!
I wish I had a dollar for every member of the Seattle press I put in Jail over my 29 year career there - I would buy a new Rifle and a new scope to go on it and have money left over for ammo!
The "press" in Seattle is and always has been anti-police so keep that in mind while you are a figgerin.
I'll add this little bit of comedy to your scolding/learning while I am here.
Last year I was Johnny on the spot down at my local Wells Fargo bank to get my monthly allowance that the VarmintWife gives me out of our joint account for mad gun money!
I was aware of how much money should be in our account and there was $27,000.00 "extra" in that account! I immediately called the VarmintWife and said to her get down to the Wells Fargo bank and see what the heck is wrong there is to much money in our account. I had completely forgotten about the ongoing 7 years of "contract negotiations" and it did not occur to me that the contract had been settled and the "retroactive" pay raise had been figgered and placed into our account before even being notified!
It was a nice surprise.
By the way my genre of Pohlice had kept a "Hands On" approach to our paid into retirement fund and guided it and and watched over it so politicians could NOT steal it.
Our monthly payments into that fund and the 6% matching funds from the governing bodies has accumulated to $1,200,000,000.00 (one billion two hundred million dollars!) with last I heard less than 2,000 officers and widows to fund pensions for the rest of their lives.
Most kalifornicationkopian retirement funds (and most other civil service entities) were SPENT and no reserve to accumulate and grow like ours has! The retirement obligations are being met by taxes instead of carefully invested and growing funds!
Sad that.
Hold into the wind
VarmintGuy

Large amounts of overtime is a sign of understaffing. If staffed appropriately, overtime would be considerably reduced for daily staffing requirements and the amount of extra OT would typically be shared across a larger pool thereby lowering individual income. Three years straight I made 25% more than my chief as our manning was 12% under minimums overall and 30% under in my class. I and a couple others had a Memorandum of Understanding from the union and city to work over the contract maximums. The wife wasn't thrilled but went along when I explained what it meant long term.

I would also look at OT for events and other extras as the city costs are typically charged in the permit fees and would go into the city's General Fund rather than police budget for this. Meaning, the police OT would be coming from the event holder rather than taxpayers. This would be shown as a police department expense but the actual cost would be covered in a line item on the city side. Whether the full cost of services makes it back to the police department is a question but in the cases I've been involved with, a premium was added to the quoted or required price so the city always gets some extra. Often these OT duties are considered outside employment by the pension board and would have no affect on one's pension.

Mandatory minimum OT for some causes is also common. My department had a three hour minimum if called back to work when off duty. Rarely did the reason for the call back go for the full three hours. The minimum time came from an earlier chief who would call for mandatory meetings and other duties to fug with people. Call a mandatory meeting for rush hour, give a BS 20 minute update, and then send the off duty people back home during rush hour. All for 15- 20 minutes of OT. Making it 3 hours gave the chief pause as that eventually totaled enough to get the finance director's notice and then the city manager's.

As for back pay, either that was the arbitrator's decision or the city agreed to the terms of a new contract. I've gone nearly two years on an expired contract and that was just to get in wages the same percentage as the rest of the city had already been given. It was also what the city had originally offered but they were upset on our refusal to accept a new part of the contract so came back with a lesser wage increase in response.

Vacation sell back was an option for me which did count towards income but it was not recognized for pension purposes. It would have been considered "double dipping" and therefore not allowed. This would also lead one to believe the OT for various events would not be included in pension liability as one can use vacation time to work the event.

OT might not count towards a pension at all depending on the pension. Some of those "20 years and out" pensions are fixed at 1/2 the base wage of a patrolman or sometimes last position held. For those the only way to secure a higher retirement income is to build up an outside retirement fund. Putting in a lot of OT would be a good way to meet that requirement.

Overall, I've always felt large OT budgets are a sign of poor staffing. There is usually a cost savings as the employer only pays 1/2 time more to fill the position but saves on benefits. There is a cost in burn out to employees - especially those that work massive amounts. In this case, one must also remember that child and spousal support may be based off the higher income which necessitates working those extra hours. Which tend to dry up at some point. Something I reminded my crew when such opportunities came about.

I think Seattle PD is very understaffed. Who in their right mind could retain their sanity and work under the conditions they are given. Seattle's over time problems are just beginning. Give them a year or two and their OT pay will be through the roof and officers will be burning out faster than they can recruit.
Second thought. Giving politicians access to any money is not very smart.
And FYI, I am like many on the fire who can see the hand writing in the wall.
And congratulations on discovering the extra gun fund dollars. That had to be a special day.

A 2000 sq ft house thats 50 or 60 years old and nothing special on the outskirts will be $1 to 1.2 million. A 1600 sq ft 3bd/2ba condo in town is about $1 million. Those are the most affordable options in Seattle. Thats why people commute to and from for a few hours a day. My house is 2375 sq ft 4bd/3ba, an hour out of town, and is $620,000. Again, nothing fancy.

Once in a blue moon I had to book at King Co Jail. As the guy you arrested gets searched and seen by medical, you stand behind the booking counter and wait. The SPD guys would look pretty tired, sometimes falling asleep during the process. I’m a dirtbag, so I’d hand out my card and let em know we take laterals. We got a good kid not too long from them.