Department of Public Safety Clement Bermudes, right, speaks during a press conference Thursday while Police Sgt. Fred Sato, the DPS public information officer listens.
Department of Public Safety Clement Bermudes held a press conference on Thursday.
NINE police officers have appealed their termination to the Civil Service Commission, Department of Public Safety Commissioner Clement Bermudes said at a press conference on Thursday afternoon.
“Filing an appeal is one of their rights, and our DPS counsel is preparing for the appeal,” he added.
In March 2023, DPS launched an investigation into 28 officers who were accused of incurring illegal overtime. These officers were placed on administrative leave.
“The investigation initially involved 28 police officers,” Bermudes said. “As it further developed, some were reinstated, and some have resigned. Of the 28, 12 were terminated last month because the allegations were substantiated against them. Keep in mind these are administrative actions.”
He noted that there were past practices that “allowed” OT.
“Those past practices were basically unofficial timekeeping, which is illegal in one way, because we have an official timekeeper — everyone clocks in at a biometric time clock. Surprisingly, most of them did not use the [clock]; they used manual write-in. One of the policies that I instituted to address that is we require everybody to use the biometric [time clock], and anybody that does not use the [clock] has to write me a letter justifying why they failed to use [it],” Bermudes said.
“They have different reasons…. I was trying to see…a consistency of pattern. That’s where we start catching them. So to address that is to ensure that everybody times in using the biometric time clock,” he added.
Bermudes reiterated that the illegal overtime investigation is part of his overall goal to rebuild trust within the department.
According to the DPS transition report submitted to the Palacios-Apatang administration, the department had been “paying out excessive OT accruals for the same group of officers (some higher-ranking officers and certain lower-ranking ones as well — specific to certain sections).”
The report added that there was “evidence of possible fraud/theft of government time in terms of excessive OT within the same group of officers every pay period.”
