The Chicago Police Department shelled out $21.3 million for overtime in April and May, putting overtime spending for 2013 in a $10.5 million hole before the traditional summer crime wave.
The July 4 Chicago Sun-Times tally totaled 38 separate shooting incidents from Wednesday evening through Sunday afternoon, including 10 homicides.
Figures provided to the newspaper Friday in response to a Freedom of Information request are particularly troubling because overtime payments run 30 days behind.
That means the police department spent $42.5 million on overtime through May long before temperatures started to rise, driving people outside and increasing the number of conflicts and shootings.
The Sun-Times reported May 3 that the police department had already burned through two-thirds of its 2013 overtime budget during the first three months of the year.
Some of that $21 million tab went to officers working in “Operation Impact,” an overtime program that started in February with 200 officers-a-night flooding 20 of Chicago’s most violent crime zones and doubled in March to 400 officers-a-night.
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