$91k is just for one city and just State Troopers. I’d hate to see the total costs for Manhattan, let alone the rest of the country:
TIMES UNION – State Police spent an estimated $91,000 on overtime last autumn monitoring and enforcing a curfew in a state-controlled park near the Occupy Albany encampment, according to records obtained by the Times Union.
Troopers arrested 86 demonstrators, some of them multiple times, between Nov. 15 and Nov. 28 when they moved in groups of several dozen from their tent city in Academy Park — undisturbed for two months in the area across from City Hall — to Lafayette Park, where state officials said an 11 p.m. curfew was in place.
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The records, obtained by the Times Union under the Freedom of Information Law, show the State Police assigned troopers from barracks around the Capital Region as well as the Hudson Valley — as many as 18 at a time — to special nighttime details at the Capitol. A spreadsheet compiled by State Police shows a total of 1,262.9 hours of overtime associated with the details, which occurred on the first two nights of the protests in October and then for two weeks in November.
State Police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said in November that troopers were being reassigned. “We wouldn’t compromise our ability to provide police services to any region,” he said at the time. “So if we had to pay overtime then we’ll pay overtime.”
Until their response last week to the Times Union’s November request, State Police have refused to say how many overtime hours were approved. Officials still wouldn’t attach a monetary estimate to the details, which include both troopers and sergeants.
The Office of the State Comptroller said the average cost for an hour of overtime in the Division of State Police was $72.13, based on tallies from 2011. That works out to just over $91,000. Statewide, the State Police spent $15.9 million on overtime last year.