The Hackensack City Council will adopt a resolution at Tuesday’s meeting asking the New Jersey Attorney General to formally determine whether it is legal for police officers to be paid twice for the same hours worked, and to confirm that the City has the right to enforce applicable ordinances, policies, and contracts needed to address scheduling abuses at the Hackensack Police Department.
This request comes on the heels of a scathing 2022 comprehensive Audit of the City’s Police Department that revealed that many of the City’s highest-ranking and highest-paid officers added tens of thousands of additional dollars to their respective salaries by working what are known as “extra-duty details,” such as providing traffic control at construction sites. In order to earn this extra compensation, the Audit revealed troubling schemes such as manipulating schedules while on duty and various other inappropriate practices. Using these methods, officers would frequently receive between $30,000 to over $50,000 in extra duty pay in a single year, resulting in total pay that could exceed $260,000.
One particularly concerning practice was that of “split shifts,” when officers would start their usual shift, then accept a lucrative extra-duty detail during the middle of the workday, then return whenever that detail ended to finish their shift. This would at times allow for officers to be paid twice for the same hours worked. At the same time, the Audit confirmed that police operations declined dramatically. The number of arrests dropped by 85% while overtime costs soared by 115%, despite calls for service remaining stable during this period.
Soon after the Audit was issued the city’s newly hired Police Director Raymond Guidetti instituted reforms to better regulate extra-duty assignments and prohibited a small number of the Police Department’s highest-ranking personnel from working them altogether. In response to the Police Director’s efforts to reform a broken system, the City’s police unions responded with a “no confidence” vote in an attempt to undermine Guidetti’s leadership and several filed copycat lawsuits in an obvious pressure tactic.
“Taxpayers rely on police Superior Officers to set an example and provide effective leadership, but instead a handful of bad actors placed their own financial gain ahead of their sworn duties to the residents they serve,” says Mayor John Labrosse. “This may well be happening in other law enforcement agencies across the State, and we hope the Attorney General will make a declarative ruling that this practice was improper and never should have happened in Hackensack.”
In addition to reforming extra-duty detail procedures, Director Guidetti has instituted a number of reforms to correct other problems identified in the Audit, including reinstituting regular command meetings and accountability practices, mandating the use of attendance sheets, and instituting a fair and transparent system for personnel assignments. The City had previously provided the Audit to the Bergen County Prosecutor and the Attorney General, but has not yet received any definitive response to its concerns.
