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Two more BPD officers being investigated in overtime probe that now covers entire department

Boston Police report that Commissioner William Gross has put two supervisors at the department's Hyde Park evidence warehouse on paid leave "due to an ongoing investigation into time and attendance issues" - and has forwarded information about their cases to the DA's office.

The department says "it is confident this is contained solely to an administrative issue and that the integrity of evidence stored at this location has not been affected or impacted." The two are the fourth and fifth BPD officers placed on leave due to questions about overtime and attendance; the department says Gross has ordered "a proactive and ongoing review of payroll for every district and unit."

In a statement, Gross said:

This alleged behavior is unacceptable for any member of the Boston Police Department. As Commissioner, I want to make it clear to every officer that any action that goes against our rules and regulations will not be tolerated - without exception.

The evidence warehouse has caused problems for BPD in the past, most notably in 2008, when heroin, cocaine, marijuana and Oxycodone being stored there disappeared.

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Comments

That’s where they put the problem children. Greed and lack of morals are hard to root out.

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It used to be the Radio Room. Then, they had the bright idea to put as many cops as possible 'on the street,' so the incompetent went back out where they could do damage. And the civilians they hired to replace them came from City Hall, and saw no reason why they should learn the locations of the city's streets. That made things much better.

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a BPD overtime scandal would be exposed.

But you gotta hand it to the BPD, they kept up the wall of silence a lot longer than the MSP did.

Look at some of the most ridiculous six-figure BPD salaries and the only logical conclusion is that much of the rank-and-file has been submitting 95-hour-per-week timesheets for quite a while now.

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Are having problems with crooked cops. Thank the Lord for the Transit Police who have been free from scandal.

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Details are supposed to be a legal form of satisfying greed. Do we need to turn details to triple time to keep our cops clean?

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End overtime. Most people don't get paid overtime, like teachers, who work till the work is done. Police, who in MA make large base salaries, need to stop getting paid overtime. I am sure the dire need for overtime will disappear if like most of us its part of a salaried job. So much obuse, they lose it. Hire more police if there is a need for more hours/week. Maybe they can use the opportunity to actually hire diverse officers.

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Abused by few depended on by many to make ends meet. Scrapping OT all together because most people don’t get paid it anymore? Maybe more people should collectively bargain to make their own workplace better before taking away from an others just a thought tho.

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I'm not in favor of eliminating pay bump for OT. But depending on OT is part of the problem -- it creates the culture of generating "billable" hours. You end up with situations where morale practically demands making sure the guys get the OT to pay for the house, the boat, the car, the annual spring training trip, yadda yadda. You also end up with situations where the guys who depend on OT end up working even when too tired to make good decisions, because the bills have piled up.

OT is helpful for special events and circumstances, but if it's ongoing, it's the manifestation of other managerial problems.

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If you said "no overtime," that would entail that police officers would end their shift 8 hours after the shift began (and I am aware that a police officer's shift is not 8 hours, but for the sake of the argument, let's pretend.) After that point, they would not be getting paid anything. I mean, you could ask if they wanted to work more hours without getting paid, but at the same time, they could explain to you that perhaps their time is worth more than $0.

Good luck with your plan of limiting police officers to a set number of hours a week, though.

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Teachers also get paid for December, February, April and summer vacation. Just because they don't get OT doesn't mean they don't have time benefits, some get stipends for extra work.

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Summer "vacation" often means a month spent putting together curricula and classrooms, as well as training time needed to keep their licenses current.

Maybe you should ask a teacher about these things? I ended up taking a week off work to cover one of the school vacations so my husband could attend a week of training.

Most people get paid vacation time, and get to pick when they take it, too.

Christmas is only 4 work days off, and this is on top of most teachers working ten hour days, and six day weeks during the semesters.

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There are pros and cons.

Even at a Max step (probably about 80K-100K in most MA towns), that isn't a job where someone would take it just for the salary. A police job on the other hand you can make an extra 100K if you want. There are some smaller stipends and coaching jobs as teacher, and you can of course work in the summer, but depending on what you teach, the prep/extra work isn't factored in.

Most cops couldn't be teachers and a lot of teachers couldn't be cops but if you had to choose (like I did), I found the pros of being on the police a little better. I can take time off whenever I want and I can work and make extra money whenever I want as well. Vacations are cheaper during the off weeks and when I was single that was very nice.

I taught a HS subject and except for your first year teaching you shouldn't need "months" of prep time before the school year to get ready. The correcting tests and papers are probably more time consuming if you want to do it right.

But I often hear cops (or others) complain about teachers getting all this time off and I always ask them why they don't take the job. Usually crickets of course.

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police and certainly the typical, majority, non-union private sector worker in this state and country.

But I agree, the Massachusetts paid detail extortion protection racket needs to end.

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