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| Skyrocketing overtime, burned-out guards plague Harris County jail |
| By houstonchronicle.com - St. John Barned-Smith |
| Published: 08/31/2016 |
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The Harris County Sheriff's Office has cut funding for law enforcement operations to cover exploding overtime costs at the department's understaffed jail, a move critics say could harm public safety while failing to address departmentwide staffing issues. Since March, the department has transferred nearly $8 million to jail operations from other areas in the department largely to cover overtime pay for jailers, which has risen 500 percent in the last two years, county records show. Sheriff Ron Hickman acknowledges the fiscal strain but said state laws have tied his hands. "When we steal money from some place in the budget like patrol, we can't buy cars anymore, or new tires, we have to put that money to pay for the inmates," he said at a recent town hall meeting in Clear Lake. "I have to (care for inmates). I'm statutorily required. Getting to your house the same day a burglary happens is not a legal requirement. So guess who suffers when we don't have the funds? Y'all do." Monthly overtime costs have risen from $261,472 in mid-March 2014 to nearly $1.4 million by mid-June this year, records show. Overtime costs in May 2015, when Hickman was appointed sheriff, were $328,357. Read More. |
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