By the time Robert O’Shaughnessy retired in May 2024, the Rochester police investigator was averaging 26 hours of overtime a week.
That amounted to $118,096 in extra pay during his final year on the force. In total, he grossed $299,033, making him the highest paid officer in the department for the second-straight year. He ranked third three years ago.
Those numbers are significant because of how they inflated his pension. That, in turn, contributes to rising pension contributions for the city and its taxpayers — an expense that spiked 57% this year to $34.5 million.
An ongoing staffing shortage and a post-pandemic spike in crime spawned a period of massive overtime for Rochester police since 2019. But special events such as festivals and sporting events were the largest single reason for overtime last year. And more senior officers get dibs on those overtime shifts.
O’Shaughnessy retired with an annual pension of $169,176, according to the New York State Comptroller’s Office. That’s $51,178 higher than his base salary in his final year as a working police officer. O’Shaughnessy’s overtime was a mix of special events, completing assignments, and on-call work.
Pensions for many officers are calculated by averaging wages over their three highest-earning years.
“Pension spiking is unfortunately not a new phenomenon,” said Ken Girardin, director of research at the Empire Center for Policy, a fiscally conservative statewide thinktank. “The defined benefit pension system that the state has used for a century gives a lot of incentive for overtime hours to be assigned to the most senior people who are closest to retirement, and for them to strategically work that overtime.”
Overtime trend
City spending on police declined during the last fiscal year, which ended on June 30.
A year ago, the outlay peaked at $16 million, almost triple the $6.9 million seen in the 2020 fiscal year. In the most recent year, the number dropped to $13.1 million, according to payroll documents obtained by WXXI News through a Freedom of Information Law request.
The figure is still high relative to pre-pandemic years. And despite the drop in overtime, overall payroll expenses increased year-over-year from $83.4 million to $89.1 million, attributable in part to a new labor contract.
Chief David Smith pointed to a reorganization plan adopted by the department last year as a pivotal means of curbing overtime. Under that plan, the department reduced its patrol sections from five to four, and increased the total number of on-duty officers per shift from 124 to 139.
Those moves dropped the need for mandatory overtime, Smith said.
“We went from mandatory holdovers of officers almost on a daily basis to, now, it’s a pretty rare occurrence when an officer is actually ordered to stay,” Smith said. “So, yes, reducing overtime was important. But you can only do that to people for so long before they can’t do it anymore.”
Smith said the department has a deepening staffing shortage and is down about 100 officers. RPD had 664 officers on payroll throughout the past year, but 22 retired or were terminated. So far this year, the department has hired 10 new officers.
The department divides its overtime into multiple categories, including filling vacancies, covering special events, and attending court or attorney meetings. Special events, which includes working at festivals, parades, and sporting events, was the largest portion of overtime for officers last year, with a total of 46,254 hours worked. Staff shortages were the second most common source of overtime, at 42,689 hours worked.
The city’s collective bargaining agreement with the Rochester Police Locust Club requires that officers with the most seniority get first dibs on special events overtime opportunities.
The union did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Officer Angelo Mercone 2024 received the highest amount of special events overtime in 2024, when he worked1,626 hours. He is eligible for retirement in 2026.
“(Special event overtime) goes through an order of seniority and everybody gets a certain number of picks,” Smith said. “There is no way to change that, unless we renegotiate the collective bargaining agreement.”
Capt. Greg Bello, a spokesperson for the department, added that the department has pushed to keep overtime voluntary. That, in turn, leaves the extra hours more attractive to senior officers who have higher salaries and are closer to retirement.
“So, if we were to start looking at younger, junior officers that are on the lower end of the pay scale, that’s the choice they make and we certainly don’t want to get into a position of mandating them,” Bello said. “It’s different areas of time in people’s careers.”
The Pension System
The contract-negotiated ability to rack up overtime toward the end of an officer’s career, and no shortage of avenues to do so, means officers often walk away with pensions close to or higher than their base salary.
O’Shaughnessy was one of three officers who ranked in the top 10 for total pay last year and retired. Jeffrey Schroeder, who retired in May, will receive a $132,780 pension, which is $29,258 more than his base salary. Robert Wetzel, who retired in June, will receive a $110,625 pension. His is $7,910 less than his base salary.
Girardin, with the Empire Center, said the act of leaving overtime policy as a part of labor negotiations has created a situation where it can be easily, and systemically, used to pad pensions.
“A very strong case could be made that certain overtime rules should be exempt from collective bargaining, in the same way police discipline should be outside of collective bargaining,” Girardin said. “There are certain decisions that should be made by elected representatives, and not subject to what happens at the negotiating table.”
Pensions for Rochester police are broken into three state-defined tiers based on hiring date. The vast majority are in two tiers: those hired between July 1973 and June 2009, or those hired after April 2012. The newer hires differ from the older ones in two ways: Overtime is not factored into their pension, and they are required to pay into the pension fund, at between 3% and 6% of wages, depending on salary.
The city is expecting next year’s police pension bill to again exceed $30 million, or about half of all payments the city expects to contribute to the New York State retirement system. The city pays that bill every December as its contribution to pensions and other retirement expenses for retired government employees.
“Certainly, we’re mindful of what things cost and what things will cost in the future,” said Deputy Mayor Michael Burns, who formerly served as the city’s budget director. “But we’re also mindful of our obligation to provide public safety that the community expects.”
Both Burns and Bello emphasized the costs associated with overtime, and their ensuing costs on pensions, are not a Rochester-specific issue.
Buffalo, for example, has a budgeted 812 officers in its Police Department, according to city budget documents. In the last fiscal year, the city nearly doubled its projected budget for overtime, ending at $14.6 million from a projected $7.7 million.
“We’re 100, 110 officers short, and we still have to provide services,” Bello said. “We can’t just simply not provide officers and throw our hands in the air.”
