Lieutenant Timothy Dolan, a 26-year veteran who leads the traffic unit and serves as vice president of the OPOA police union, was paid $493,247 in overtime in 2024. Combined with his salary and other pay, this netted him a $711,000 paycheck, making him OPD’s highest-paid employee — a title he’s held for several years now. His pay was almost double that of the chief of police and nearly three times the mayor’s paycheck.In Dolan’s case, he earned at least $100,000 in overtime — and possibly far more — solely by reviewing paperwork for traffic collisions, records reveal.
The paperwork for Dolan’s overtime also reveals that OPD failed to document almost half of the overtime hours he worked, making it impossible to determine what he was doing much of the time.
Dolan spent over 800 hours of overtime in 2024 reviewing collision reports — the equivalent of about five months of work in a normal full-time job.
In 2024, Dolan logged an eye-popping amount of overtime — 3,304 hours, records reveal. This was on top of the 1,938 hours he worked as part of his normal shifts, for a total of 5,242 hours. That’s the equivalent of more than two and a half full-time jobs.
Some work stretches were seemingly superhuman, according to the records OPD provided us.
On July 9, Dolan reported he worked 23 hours. The next day, he worked 16 hours, and for the following three days, he worked 15 hours each.
Dolan’s overtime records raise concerns about how he, or any officer, can safely and effectively do their job without taking time to rest; he didn’t respond to questions about that.
“Truck drivers are only allowed to drive so many hours in a day for safety reasons,” said Julian Ware, vice president for IFPTE Local 21, a union that represents civilian city employees and which has been critical of OPD’s use of overtime. “I don’t think it should be any different for sworn officers who are carrying guns, tasers, and pepper spray, and driving vehicles. It’s a tremendous amount of responsibility that they have.”
“There’s so much research and data just in general about sleep deprivation and safety,” said Brooks. “It also impacts your irritability, your mood, mood swings.… How are you treating Oaklanders that you come in contact with? There’s no way that you’re having capable or competent judgment.”
according to his Overtime Worked Forms, he worked at least 19 days in a row — and Dolan worked 15 hours or more on all but two of these days. The department didn’t respond to questions about whether Dolan was authorized to do this.
For five years now, Oakland has struggled with immense budget deficits.
One major source of overspending in the city is the police department. By far the most expensive city service, the Oakland Police Department’s $386 million budget this year is about 19% of Oakland’s total spending. And each year, OPD has come under scrutiny for its runaway overtime spending, routinely blowing past its approved levels by millions of dollars. Last fiscal year, the Department spent over $55 million on overtime. Thirty-one million of this was over budget.
But historical data throws into question whether increasing staffing will rectify OPD’s chronic overtime overspending. A recent report by several civilian city unions found that over the past 15 years, even when department staffing increased, overtime continued to go up. From 2011 to 2024, staffing increased by nearly 9%. Over the same period, overtime went up by almost 200%.
Recent financial pressures have caused the city to lay off scores of civilian employees and freeze spending across a range of programs. Meanwhile, the number of police officers bringing in six-figure overtime packages rose dramatically.
In 2021, 58 officers were paid over $100,000 in overtime. By the end of 2024, the number of officers paid this much for overtime nearly tripled to 169.
And the number of officers making over $200,000 in overtime more than quadrupled from six to a total of 27 over the same period.https://oaklandside.org/2026/01/29/oakland-police-overtime
