Police at OSU paid more than $1M in overtime

Highest paid OSU police officers in 2010

* Base salary plus overtime can differ from gross pay for several reasons, including a change in base salary during the year

Source: Dayton Daily News analysis of Ohio State University Data

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Two Ohio State University police officers worked so many extra shifts in 2010 that their overtime pay was thousands more than their base salaries, pushing their total compensation over $165,000 each, a Dayton Daily News investigation found.

An analysis of university payroll records found overtime shifts are so plentiful that 16 officers earned more than $100,000 last year, with five officers making more than Chief Paul S. Denton.

The two top officers, Richard A. Green and Thomas A. Schneider, each took in more than $84,000 in overtime last year.

The overtime numbers “horrified” state Sen. Peggy Lehner, R-Kettering, who chairs the state education committee and is a non-voting member of the Ohio Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s public universities.

“This does not sound appropriate, and it sounds wasteful on the surface,” Lehner said. “It sounds to me like you could hire additional police officers at less expense.”

The OSU police department’s 53 supervisors and officers earned more than $1 million in overtime in 2010 out of a total payroll of $4.9 million, the Daily News found.

More than half came from working special events and is reimbursed by other agencies, police officials say, but the figure was unrivaled by any southwest Ohio university.

Chief Denton defended the amount of overtime pay, saying it was not unlike other Ohio police departments. OSU is a “city within a city” with 100,000 students, faculty and visitors, a hospital, major sporting events, campus-wide construction and even a nuclear reactor to secure.

“We are one of the largest campuses in the country,” he said. “We are a flat organization and a lean organization.”

OSU police staffing is less than 1 officer per 1,000 students, under the 1.5 officers per 1,000 student national average for universities with more than 15,000 students, according to U.S. Department of Justice statistics. OSU officers can work as many as 119 hours a week as long as they take seven hours off between shifts and work no longer than 17 hours at a time, as stipulated by their union contract.

Jim Gilbert, Capital City Fraternal Order of Police president, said it was unusual for police officers to earn more in overtime than in base pay. Gilbert’s organization represents 28 departments, including OSU police.

He said he had no objections to a few officers earning extra money working extra hours in one year, but “it’s impossible for somebody to have the ability to sustain (that amount of work).”

“We’d love to see more officers hired,” Gilbert said.

Denton would also like to hire more officers, but said in tight fiscal times for state universities, it’s more cost-effective to use overtime rather than hire more employees who receive training, vacation and other benefits. “If I need officers, we need to justify that,” he said.

‘Believe me, they’re earning their money’

OSU has so many overtime opportunities that the university often hires other departments, including Columbus police and Ohio Highway Patrol, to bridge the gap, Denton said.

Much of the overtime is needed for special events, including football games and large concerts that use campus venues, Denton said. Costs for those events are passed on to event organizers and ticket holders, so “no public money” is used, Denton said.

Denton said the school bills organizations more than $2 million a year for security at events, and he estimates about half a million of that goes to his officers.

Then there’s unexpected overtime: $7,400 for police to be at a late-night student jump into Mirror Lake that drew thousands, $25,000 for a presidential visit and $17,000 for a bomb threat.

That averages between $25,000 and $45,000 a month, he said. OSU officers worked 14,000 overtime hours for special events last year; Columbus police worked 17,000 hours on the campus, too. With so much construction on campus needing extra patrols and traffic assistance, Denton said his officers’ overtime roughly doubled from 2009.

“There’s no question that they earned and worked for what they earned,” Denton said. “If we thought anyone’s work performance was affected by that, absolutely we would take action.”

Added Chief Deputy Richard D. Morman: “Some of these high earners you look at, these are officers who are willing to work jobs nobody else wants to work. Believe me, they’re earning their money.”

The Daily News requested interviews with the top overtime-earning officers at OSU through their union, and did not receive any response. Overtime pay can increase pension payouts after retirement. The top five overtime earners at OSU police have between two and 22 years experience. Denton said overtime shifts are awarded to the volunteer who worked the least amount of overtime hours when more than one officer volunteers for a shift.

Other universities nowhere close

A Daily News analysis of police pay at other area public colleges and universities found overtime is common, but nowhere near OSU’s levels.

The University of Cincinnati has one more officer on its police payroll than OSU and spent one-third as much in overtime — $348,744. That’s 11 percent of their police payroll budget, well behind OSU’s overtime, which makes up 21 percent of police officer and supervisor payroll. UC’s top overtime earner was police officer David Henson. He earned $23,017 in overtime last year, in addition to his $59,404 salary.

“Dave Henson volunteers (for overtime) a lot and that’s good, because we don’t have to mandate an officer who didn’t want to come in to come in the day they don’t want to work,” said UC Police Chief Gene Ferrara.

“(UC) football is nothing compared to Ohio State, but on our football detail, we have over 100 officers on post,” he said.

UC bills between $25 for security officers to $49 for a police captain per hour. UC received $756,457 in such payments between July 2010 and June 2011.

The university contracts with area off-duty Cincinnati police officers and sheriff’s deputies to supplement their force at such events. This cost the school $298,410 last year.

Other than covering these events, “most of our overtime is someone called in sick or at the last minute we had to ask someone to work over,” he said.

Ferrara said he controls his personnel costs by having 25 security officers supplement his 50-officer force. The security officers don’t carry weapons and have no arrest powers, so are paid less.

“It doesn’t’ make sense to us to pay the higher salary for police officers that have higher levels of training, make decisions about denying people their freedom when some of the activities being done don’t require that level of training and don’t require arrests,” he said. “I don’t think there’s anyone who uses it to the same extent we do.”

Miami University spent $110,892 last year on overtime for police, or 6 percent of the department’s personnel payroll. The top overtime earner grossed $82,415, including $14,305 in overtime.

“We’ve tried hard and looked at cost savings as a whole and filling them with on-duty people,” said Miami University Police Chief John McCandless. “It becomes a little more difficult when staffing levels are low to do that.”

McCandless said it’s cheaper to pay a few people overtime at certain times than to have more officers on staff year-round.

“I don’t need the same amount of police officers in the first few weeks in September, when the students arrive, as I need in June, when there’s no one here,” he said.

But at the same time, McCandless said, he has to balance overtime with what his officers can handle.

“This is an important job and you got to be safe,” he said. “Somebody can only work so many hours in a 24- or 48-hour stretch.”

‘I wouldn’t know where to begin’

S. Daniel Carter, policy director for Security on Campus, a national nonprofit advocating for better police protection on campuses across the nation, had a hard time understanding why OSU police had so much overtime.

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” Carter said. “It sounds like they are working another job.”

Security on Campus was founded by the parents of Jeanne Clery, a Lehigh University student who was raped and murdered in 1986 by a fellow student at the Pennsylvania campus. The organization advocates for better trained campus police staff. Carter said while conditions have been improving, its an uphill battle.

“Campus police have become more professionalized,” Carter said. “We’re still fighting for equality. There are $100 million in law enforcement grants each year and very little goes to campus police.”

Carter’s group wants a national center for campus police that would set best practices for the industry. As enrollment booms, campuses expand and become more integral to their communities. They also become more difficult and costly to protect.

State Sen. Chris Widener, R-Springfield, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has asked universities to better control spending.

“(OSU police overtime is) just another example of how those in the public sector need to continue to find ways to reduce their expenditures,” Widener said.

Dayton Daily News reporters and database experts spent two months gathering and researching salary and overtime data from six public colleges and universities in the region. Then they analyzed the databases for this and other stories about public college and university pay practices. See the database online at www.DaytonDailyNews.com/news/data

Gerald Fullam contributed to this report.