An audit to be released today blasts Denver police for lax oversight of off-duty work — criticizing the department for “insufficient controls over pay and scheduling practices” as well as its overall policies governing outside work.
“Department management did not appear to have effective tools for overseeing and managing officer time and related costs as well as for ensuring compliance with time-accounting related legal requirements and internal policies,” a draft of the report from the office of Denver Auditor Dennis Gallagher states.
Secondary employment — the practice of working off-hours providing security at sporting events, bars and other venues — is allowed under Denver’s employment regulations but has become a source of contention, at times generating accusations of double-dipping and conflicts of interest.
Police Chief Gerry Whitman, in a written response, defended the practice.
“The off-duty work by officers at the Denver Police Department at secondary-employment jobs is an asset to the community,” Whitman stated. “Uniformed officers are needed to direct traffic and control crowds at parades and large public gatherings.”
He added that the presence of officers in venues, including bars and restaurants, deters crime and helps provide “a safe and secure environment for patrons.”
The audit investigates secondary employment between June 2005 and June 2006. The Denver Post published an investigation of secondary employment in April 2006. Among the audit’s key findings:
• Officers were recorded as working secondary employment when they were off duty because of an illness or limited-duty status, a violation of the department’s operations manual. Officers who no longer worked at the department were recorded as working off-duty jobs.
• Officers may require up-front cash payments for off-duty work or refuse to work a job.
• Officers can negotiate their own pay for such work, and the agreed-upon rates are not documented.
• Those officers in charge of “scheduling” off-duty work may charge outside employers for the service and determine the amount they charge. The rates for scheduling such work also are not documented, and the scheduling system may break an executive order from the mayor’s office prohibiting an officer from working as a broker for off-duty services.
• Other cities are more stringent on such work, particularly Portland, Ore., where off-duty work is barred unless it involves teaching, writing for professional journals or selling creative work. Other cities monitor the pay.
• Some officers “did not appear to consistently work the required 160 hours each work period, and/or appeared to exceed the maximum number of hours they are allowed to work in a day or week.”
Failure to adhere to the 160-hour work period violated the city’s collective-bargaining rules and also resulted in underpayment and overpayment to officers, the audit states.
Whitman said in his response that the practice of scheduling such work does not violate the mayor’s executive order. He added that some private employers have failed to pay officers, which has necessitated up-front pay.
Further, the chief said the auditor’s recommendation that off-duty pay be routed through the department instead of letting the officers receive the pay directly from private employers would pose problems.
“Routing of payments would increase staffing demands for the department and would have a budgetary impact,” the chief said.
Whitman also said those officers who received off-duty work during scheduled sick days may have never actually worked the off-duty hours and neglected to file the necessary paperwork.
He said the department determined that those instances where those who no longer worked for the department appeared to receive off-duty work involved data-entry errors.
The audit also criticized the department for an unwieldy time-record-keeping system that contributed to lax controls and mistakes in pay, including overpayment and underpayment for overtime.
Whitman’s written response acknowledged many of those problems but stressed that the department “has made significant investments in technology and accounting practices” since the time period that the audit reviewed.
“We readily acknowledge that these changes were needed and that the time-accounting systems, which were in place during the audit period, were not optimal for a department of our size,” Whitman said in the letter he forwarded to Gallagher on March 14.
Whitman said the department attempted to overhaul its time and attendance systems in 2001, but the software had “numerous shortcomings and limitations.”
He said the department terminated the contract with the vendor in 2004. By December of last year, the department had put in place a new record-keeping system called TeleStaff, the chief wrote.
The department sought relief for breach of contract from the previous software vendor, but the city attorney’s office advised that pursuing such a solution “wasn’t cost effective,” Sgt. Ernest Martinez, who coordinated the Police Department’s response to the audit, said in an interview.
Christopher N. Osher: 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com
