By A.C. Thompson

IT'S INTERESTING TO see how different police forces are responding to the ongoing economic meltdown. Some, like Washington, D.C.'s Metropolitan Police Department, are doing fairly radical budgetary housecleaning.

Stung by repeated payroll scandals and squeezed by the recession, D.C. police chief Charles Ramsey is angling to cut his 3,600-officer department's roughly $20 million overtime bill by more than $6 million.

The San Francisco Police Department, on the other hand, is still spending like it's 1999 – and the department's overtime tab has ballooned to epic proportions.

A brief look at the numbers: Last year, according to city records, 463 San Francisco officers pulled in $100,000-plus in salary and overtime payments; 173 SFPD officers made at least $30,000 in overtime. Of those well-compensated cops, 40 billed the city for $50,000 or more in overtime.

The undisputed O.T. king was Inspector Michael Gaynor, who logged $88,284 in overtime, bringing his total salary to $171,442, just a few Gs less that of Chief Fred Lau. You go, Mike!

Rather than curbing the payroll bonanza, Mayor Willie Brown is sweetening the deal. For the upcoming year, Brown plans to boost O.T. dollars from $20.6 million to $31.2 million. Though the feds will pick up a good chunk of that bill – for added airport security – the city will still be on the hook for $2.4 million more in O.T. than last year.

Compared with cops in several other cities, the SFPD's 2,000 sworn officers are living large. In Los Angeles a pact between the police department and city hall puts a cap on overtime spending. Under the terms of the agreement, the LAPD can't rack up more than 1.2 million total O.T. hours annually.

Consequently, LAPD's overtime bill is relatively modest. For the next fiscal year the LAPD is planning to spend just $45 million – and that's spread between 8,900 officers.

Wray Hollemon, a high-ranking LAPD official, told us curbing O.T. expenses is a perennial struggle. "In 33 years here I've seen that overtime is something which employees feel they're entitled to," said Hollemon, the department's commanding officer of fiscal operations.

Philadelphia cops also earn far less in overtime money. Philly, with its 7,000 officers, spent an estimated $36.5 million on overtime during the past fiscal year, according to deputy controller Tony Radwanski.

SFPD's comparatively chunky overtime budget points to a "management problem," said Dan MacAllair, executive director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice. Excessive overtime spending "is deeply ingrained in the culture of San Francisco, and it has nothing to do with efficiency or even public safety."

The department defends its payroll practices. "Overtime money is absolutely spent appropriately," officer Jim Deignan told us. "It mostly goes to court [appearances by officers], covering demonstrations, investigations. If you bust some guy at the end of the shift, you've got to book the guy, fill out all the reports – it can take hours."

Of course, there are good reasons to give cops O.T. If officers use the additional hours to pull murderers and rapists off the streets, then obviously the money is well spent. Unfortunately, going by SFPD's abysmal stats – according to a recent San Francisco Chronicle series, the department is solving only 28 percent of the violent crimes it investigates – it doesn't look like taxpayers are getting their money's worth.

Officers' estimated overtime, fiscal year 2002-03

Police department Number of officers Budgeted overtime

San Francisco 2,000 $31.2 million

Washington, D.C. 3,600 $14-$15 million

Philadelphia 7,000 $38 million