As a sergeant at the San Francisco Police Department, Dennis Lai makes just under $180,000 a year, a salary comfortably above the city’s median income for a family of four. But that’s only a quarter of what he actually earned last fiscal year.

 

Lai boosted his salary by earning more than $450,000 in overtime pay. That’s the most overtime earned by a city employee since at least 2013, a Chronicle analysis of data from the San Francisco Controller’s Office found.

 

Overtime paid to police officers in San Francisco skyrocketed in the previous three years as staffing at the department declined. The number of police earning more than $100,000 in overtime more than tripled from 131 in the July 2021-June 2022 fiscal year to 493 in the July 2023-June 2024 fiscal year.

 

The rise comes despite research, previously cited by the city, showing working overtime shifts can lead to worse performance by officers.

 

Median overtime paid to police officers more than doubled over that same period — going from $32,500 to $67,200, the data shows.

San Francisco is far from the only city increasing police overtime pay in response to staffing shortages. Local news outlets across the country — from Boston to Chicago to Washington D.C. to San Jose — have all reported on soaring overtime pay for police officers in recent months.

 

And experts for decades have cautioned that police working long overtime hours is unsustainable. In 1996, in response to rising police overtime, the San Francisco city budget analyst wrote in a report that the high amounts of overtime could negatively impact public safety.

 

“Police officers who work a high number of overtime hours can become fatigued, increasing the potential for using poor judgment during the performance of their duties,” the report said. “Using poor judgment can impact the safety of the police officer, his or her co-workers and the public, and can result in increased officer injury and workers compensation costs for the City.”