Four Fort Worth police officers and 12 Fort Worth firefighters doubled their salaries with overtime pay over the past two years, according to data obtained by the Star-Telegram through an open records request.

City officials said the police officers worked in positions that required a lot of overtime. They also said the COVID-19 pandemic required the departments to use overtime to cover staffing shortages and manage testing and vaccination clinics.

The four police officers earned between $69,000 and $152,000 in overtime, according to the city’s data. Their total pay with overtime ranged from $132,000 to $257,000. Without overtime they would have earned $62,000 to $104,000.

The 12 firefighters earned between $81,000 to $157,000 in overtime in 2021. Their total pay with overtime ranged between $162,000 and $278,000, compared to base pay of $81,000 to $124,000.

Three of the police officers who doubled their pay worked in positions that required a lot of overtime, said Manny Ramirez, president of the Fort Worth Police Officers Association. One works on a federal task force, one is a homicide detective and one works in the understaffed 911 call center, he said.

He noted both homicide detectives and call center staffers have been slammed by a spike in violent crime in 2020 and 2021.

Ramirez couldn’t speak to the fourth officer’s situation, but assistant city manager Fernando Costa wrote in an email the officer’s overtime came from working extra shifts staffing vaccination sites.

The police department used voluntary overtime for the pandemic response, a police department spokesperson wrote in an email.

Some department staff volunteered more than others, and some needed special training, which is why the overtime was concentrated among these few officers, the spokesperson wrote.

Most of the police and firefighters who doubled their salaries had more than 20 years of service with the city. That won’t affect their pensions, however, because overtime is excluded from pension payout calculations.

“Frankly, I’m surprised it isn’t more people given how drastically short we are,” Ramirez said.

In March, the police department was 104 officers short of the 1,743 it is authorized to hire, according to its quarterly demographics report. Most of those vacancies were in the patrol division.

Roughly a quarter of the fire department’s payroll over the past two years has gone to overtime, while around 8% of the police department’s payroll has been for overtime.

The fire department has increasingly relied on overtime because of staffing challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, assistant city manager Valerie Washington said.

The 12 firefighters who doubled their salaries with overtime were engaged in various work assignments throughout the year such as operations, recruiting, hiring and COVID-19 efforts, she said.

City regulations and national standards require four firefighters per engine per shift to meet minimum staffing levels. The department was hit hard by the pandemic with 116 of its 927 firefighters out on COVID-19 related leave at the end of 2021.

“Chief and his team have had to manage meeting fire’s operational needs while balancing direct impacts to firefighters who need to use leave for various purposes. It was tough on the department.” Washington said.

She also noted the city leaned heavily on the department to set up and run COVID-19 testing sites and vaccine clinics.

The large overtime payouts indicate the need for more firefighters, argued Michael Glynn, president of the firefighters’ union.

Glynn pushed the city during the 2022 budget cycle to hire an additional 254 firefighters over the course of five years to bring Fort Worth’s the overall number in line with similarly sized cities. The final budget included funding for 10 additional firefighters, bringing the city’s total to 963.

Washington said she expects the department to hit that number after the latest recruiting class graduates at the end of the month.

The city is waiting on the results of a fire department staffing study, which will help it determine whether the city needs more firefighters and where it needs to deploy them.

“I think we will need to do something with the fire department and help with their staffing,” Washington said.

At the same time she argued the city needs to show residents it did the detailed legwork to determine best way to use their tax dollars.

“The staffing study will give us that guidance to make sure what we’re doing is balanced and holistic,” she said.

Members of the Fort Worth City Council echoed Washington’s sentiments about letting the staffing study guide their policy decisions.

“If it says we need more firefighters, we’re going to need more firefighters. If it says we need less then we’ll cross that bridge,” said council member Elizabeth Beck.

Beck pointed to a 2019 staffing study of the police and code enforcement departments as a model for how the city would respond to recommendations about the fire department.

That study recommended adding 338 officers and 91 support staff over a 10-year period.

If the fire department study recommends adding 200 new firefighters, the city will take a similar phased approach, Beck said.

The city also has to guard against burnout for its public safety employees, said council member Michael Crain. He emphasized the difficulties being a first responder working normal hours, and said those problems are compounded when working large amounts of overtime.

“We don’t let truckers drive 30 hours at night, we don’t let pilots or flight attendants do that, so it’s linked to all of those positions who need to be fresh doing their job,” he said.