PORTLAND, Ore. — On Wednesday, Portland City Council unanimously approved an emergency ordinance intended to temporarily incentivize Portland police officers and sergeants to sign up for overtime shifts. The rate of pay for officers and sergeants who work overtime will increase from 1.5 times their normal rate to double time for the next 60 days.
The ordinance will add a letter of agreement to modify the current collective bargaining agreement between the city and the Portland Police Association.
The total amount of enhanced overtime that is allowed to be spent is $1 million and will come from PPB's current year budget.
"We will find a million dollars within the Police Bureau's budget to fund this. I view it as a pilot to see what is the appetite of our members to come in and work overtime if there is this enhanced payment." said Deputy Chief Michael Frome during the council presentation.
During the city council hearing, Frome attempted to explain the scope of PPB's short staffing issues, using a recent shift for Saturday, August 12 at the east precinct as an example.
"East precinct afternoon shift has a minimum staffing number of 19," Frome said. "We had 12 people not working. We had 7 people for the entire shift for east precinct."
"The real challenge right now though is that when people call 911, we need to make sure we have enough people to respond to those acute emergencies," Aaron Schmautz, president of the Portland Police Association, told KGW.
Schmautz said that he looked at staffing levels for May and June 2023 and said every shift was short an average of four officers, for a total of 1,500 shifts per month.
"Sadly, we're having to hire overtime just simply to get to the minimum number of people we need to safely police our streets. It being short-term I think is commensurate with that cost and we can analyze after that 60 days really what to do next," Schmautz added.
According to the Portland Police Bureau's website, as of August 15, PPB had 70 vacant officer positions. While the agency has a total of 535 officers, 96 are in training and 25 on leave. Only 291 are currently assigned to patrol across the city's three precincts, and significantly fewer are working on a given shift.
The city's recruitment portal says that officer salaries start at $79,456 with a $5,000 signing bonus and benefits 95% paid by the city. Lateral hires are more likely to earn around $100,000 a year.
"I think that the one recruitment and retention benefit here is to say that the city and the bureau both signal that we're willing to do what it takes to ensure the safety of both our city, but also the safety of the people out there keeping our city safe," Schmautz said, "making sure we have enough people in the cars to respond and cover each other if a real acute emergency comes up."
The limited double overtime pilot program will last 60 days.
Portland City Council approved a similar pilot program back in October that includes double overtime for 911 dispatchers. They recently renewed the program through the end of the current fiscal year.
"The goal of this pilot was to incentivize volunteer overtime, which frees up coaches to train new call takers," said Jaymee Cuti, public information officer for the Portland bureaus of Emergency Management and Emergency Communications. "At the time that this pilot was proposed, we had nearly 30 trainees in the process of certification, but low staffing routinely resulted in trainings getting cancelled."
Before the pilot program, Cuti said, the city was able to provide about 66.5 hours of police dispatch training. That number skyrocketed to 179.25 hours after double overtime began — due entirely, Cuti added, to an increased number of volunteer overtime hours.
"Our resilient employees understand this effort as being a means to an end," Cuti continued. "They recognize that they are key to reaching our goals. And the bureau recognizes we must pay them for their significant contribution. As staffing continues to grow, we have observed an increase in morale as call takers are seeing a light at the end of what has been a fairly long tunnel."
