A group of Chicago cops have filed grievances within the Department over what they say are “arbitrary, capricious and inconsistent rulings” that determine who benefits from Voluntary Supplemental Work Opportunity (VSWO).
The writer of a post on Second City Cop, a blog site with more than 50,000 followers, said that he and a handful of others have filed grievances, and “the FOP (the police union) has indicated they will take this to class action status based on the number of officers affected (220+ in just 3 months).”
The writer said that who benefits from VSWO should be based on seniority but that documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act show that “discipline (no VSWO allowed) is completely arbitrary. I found several examples where other coppers committed the same exact sin as me, but received no penalty.”
A Department source familiar with how VSWO works (who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the issue) said that there are several scenarios under which officers may sign up to work on their days off.
“For example, after the ‘peaceful protests’ of 2020 you may remember seeing marked squad cars all over the Gold Coast Michigan Av area,” he wrote in an email. “Those officers signed up to work overtime and perform that ‘duty.’”
Voluntary overtime not only benefits the cops but saves the city money, the source added.
“Contractual agreements are 'not triggered' since the work is voluntary, and officers earn less than they do on normal shifts."
Police overtime has become more costly ($210 million in 2022) and contentious in recent years, and can be directly tied to the decline in the complement of officers, down 1,700 since 2019, wrote former mayoral candidate Paul Vallas in a commentary recently posted by the Illinois Policy Institute.
In addition, Vallas wrote that “the lack of officers is directly to blame for the dramatic increase in the number of high-priority 911 calls for which the Chicago Police Department did not have a squad car available to respond. Chicagoans implicitly know there is a severe officer shortage.”
A media representative for the Department emailed an overtime guideline when asked for a comment about the comments in Second City Cop blog.
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