Evidently the Milwaukee Police Department's "management" staff is operating in the 18th Century:
Deputy Comptroller Mike Daun and Ald. Michael Murphy pointed to auditors' findings that police commanders weren't using data to study overtime costs, weren't matching the overtime hours allocated to district stations with the overtime budget approved by the council, and were simply expecting overtime to rise each year instead of justifying overtime hours from the bottom up.
Un-friggin' believable.
But here's the Crock-of-the-Week-Line-of-Hooey nominee:
Hegerty and Eileen Force, spokeswoman for Mayor Tom Barrett, said it wasn't fair to compare cities without considering other social factors such as poverty and teen pregnancy.
What? Nanette forgot about "Lack of Federal Funds, the Iraq War, and Global Warming?"
Proper administration and deployment of resources and policing strategy can reduce the excessive overtime. Another cost saving measure would be to trim the fat. The upper echelon of the MPD is top heavy with "chiefs" and other Command Staff who who are about as efficient as a fast ship dragging an anchor. It is my understanding from having spoken to one alderman and Department members that this "study" did not even look at administrative staffing. There certainly are provisions in the police officers' contract that need to be adjusted to increase efficiency and save cost, but when your police chief implements an overtime "summer initiative" from Memorial Day to Labor Day at an estimated cost of two million dollars (which is probably on the light side considering that citations and arrests usually result in extension of regular duty and court-related overtime), well you do the math. And what I found interesting was the number of sworn personnel on the MPD. Nannette has been wringing her hands about the lack of officers over the last 3+ years, yet the study indicates a number of sworn officers greater than past years (prior to Nannette).
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