Minneapolis police employee overtime under investigation; double-billing alleged in search warrant

The Minneapolis Internal Affairs Division and state crime bureau are investigating a Minneapolis police employee for possible wage theft related to overtime.

An Minneapolis Police Department spokesman said its Internal Affairs Division uncovered “potential criminal conduct related to overtime” and at Chief Brian O’Hara’s request, the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) is conducting the investigation. MPD will not comment on the open investigation, the spokesman said.

A senior special agent with the BCA applied for a search warrant July 8 for employment records for a Minneapolis Police Department civilian employee, a crime-prevention specialist in his 30s.

The Minnesota Star Tribune typically does not name suspects until they are charged.

The BCA agent wrote in the application that he’s assisting with an MPD wage-theft case investigating allegations the crime-prevention specialist falsely claimed overtime while working for both MPD and the University of Minnesota.

The employee told the Star Tribune he wasn’t aware of any investigation, and still works for the city and university.

The MPD has logged skyrocketing overtime since the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. A wave of police officers left their jobs in the aftermath, creating staffing shortfalls. The force shrank from about 900 officers before Floyd’s murder to 560 in the spring of 2024, the lowest in at least four decades.

Heavy overtime, combined with retroactive overtime pay in the current police labor contract, combined to create record spending in that category last year of $28 million, some $12 million more than was budgeted. That pushed 66 employees’ overtime into six figures last year, according to MPD officials.

The search warrant application says an MPD Internal Affairs Division investigator is looking into allegations the crime-prevention specialist claimed overtime “most days of the week” for fake meetings and worked from home most days, even though he’s only allowed to work from home one day per week. A co-worker alleged the specialist claimed to work 12 hours per day, Monday through Thursday, for going to neighborhood association meetings he never attended.

The University of Minnesota Department of Public Safety also hired the crime-prevention specialist as a cultural liaison, and Internal Affairs found he claimed nearly 82 hours of overtime pay while working overlapping hours at the university between May and September of 2024. His co-worker alleged the man never reported to the MPD that he had a second job, as required.

The search warrant says Internal Affairs found evidence the specialist didn’t attend the neighborhood association meetings for which he was paid overtime. The search warrant was granted for employment records at both MPD and the university.

Crime-prevention specialists are nonsworn civilian employees. Minneapolis payroll data shows the subject of the search warrant was paid at least $18,500 in overtime last year.