The Fond du Lac police chief is defending an officer who earned more money than he did over the last two years by working overtime. Overnight officer Jed Martin led the state with a weekly average of 34 overtime hours, receiving nearly $74,000 in overtime pay in 2013. His total pay was $135,000. Last year Martin received $90,000 in overtime with an average of 42 hours of overtime per week. Police chief Bill Lamb addressed the issue at this week’s council meeting. Lamb says the department has been working short for a number of years due to retirements and last year when five officers were suspended and four resigned after violating the department’s code of conduct. The chief says its not as though the officer is getting paid for work he didn’t do. He says the overtime is within the officer’s contractural rights and when you peel back the layers and see what’s driving it it makes sense. “You have an individual that stepped up to the plate, was taking a lot of hours that we had on the table,” Lamb told WFDL news. “Some people like the overtime, some people don’t. We have a lot of people with young families or some that may be going back to school. All those extra hours don’t fit well for them so we have a few that step up and take on a lot of those hours as long as we’re doing so safely and inside the contract.” Lamb says starting this year there are still ten vacancies in the department and three officers are currently in field training. Lamb says until there are more hires that brings the vacancy number down to only two or three the department will continue to lean on the overtime.
