San Francisco City Hall Deputy Barry Bloom earns MILLIONS in overtime, clocking over 100 hours per week over past two years, getting just 10 hours away from office to sleep and eat

A San Francisco deputy sheriff has found a way to make millions from his government job by working 100 hours a week at San Francisco City Hall.

For the past two fiscal years, Barry Bloom, who primarily patrols the SF City Hall area, has averaged more than 100 hours a week on duty. As of 2016, he works an average of at least 95 hours per week.

Due to the enormous workload, Bloom has only ten hours between shifts to eat, sleep, shower and do other things outside of his job as a public safety supervisor. San Francisco law enforcement offices are generally understaffed at a time when crime is raging in the coastal city and homeless, drug-addicted people fill the streets.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Bloom’s base salary in fiscal year 2022 was $123,790 – with overtime he earned $530,935.

Since 2016, Bloom has reportedly paid more than $2.2 million in overtime pay — by far the most any other city employee earns.

The closest two workers earned $1.9 million and $1.8 million in overtime, respectively, since 2016.

Sheriff Paul Miyamoto said Bloom’s work habits are well known at City Hall and have resulted not only in a huge amount of overtime compensation, but numerous awards for his services.

“He not only signs for overtime, but he actually gets the work done,” Miyamoto says of his deputy.

Miyamoto said Bloom has made about 28 “Narcan saves” in recent months, referring to the drug that can reverse an opioid overdose.

City Hall is located in San Francisco’s Civic Center neighborhood, a place where the city’s tragically drug-addicted population regularly gathers and where drug dealers can do business.

Bloom has held multiple positions over the course of his 29-year career with the sheriff’s office. Now he spends most of his time patrolling City Hall, the area of ​​which is guarded 24 hours a day by the sheriff’s office.

The sheriff’s office has been chronically understaffed and has relied heavily on overtime for years to fill gaps in the schedule.

Several years ago, the city superintendent’s office found that full-time employees of the sheriff’s office spent an average of 20 percent of their total work hours on overtime.

Most employees must work at least two hours of overtime per week. Then-Sheriff Vicki Hennessy was offered more than a dozen recommendations on how to improve the bureau’s personnel practices.

The need for overtime at the sheriff’s office was attributed in part to an increased workload for deputies due to policies such as bail reform, and the lack of an increase in the agency’s staff budget, according to the audit.

San Francisco Deputy Sheriffs’ Association president Ken Lomba said the city is not helping itself by consistently failing to aggressively recruit staff for the department to retain as many staff as needed.

“We have periods where deputy sheriffs get tired of all the forced overtime, and they look elsewhere because it’s just too much,” he told the Chronicle.

Lomba said he is particularly concerned about staff shortages in provincial prisons.

“When the prisons are understaffed, it becomes extremely risky for the safety of the detainees and for the safety of the officers,” he said, adding, “We are only one emergency away from a trial.”

The department is currently short of 176 full-time sworn positions, 41 non-sworn positions, and 24 cadets.

A sheriff’s spokesman responded by saying, “The San Francisco Sheriff’s Office is aggressively recruiting to fill vacant positions to meet mandatory minimums to avoid these high levels of overtime that we’ve seen since the onset of COVID-19. 19 experience.’

Miyamoto himself acknowledged that the long shifts can be a problem for some newer recruits, who haven’t yet gotten used to the job’s requirements.

However, veteran delegates are used to the long hours, he said.

Despite that belief, the department cut the number of weekly overtime hours required from three to two last year, and recently built a small living area for showering and sleeping.

It’s a well-known problem and a bad time for San Francisco to be understaffed in its law enforcement departments as crime and drug abuse spiral out of control in the wealthy West Coast city.

The city has suffered rampant fentanyl use and fatal overdoses in recent years, heading into its deadliest year yet.

Preliminary reports indicate that there were 346 drug overdose deaths in the city in the first five months of 2023 – an increase of more than 40 percent from the same period in 2022.

Economists have warned that the city is entering an “urban doom loop,” a vicious circle of interconnected trends and forces that are plunging cities into economic and social ruin.

Widespread theft has recently proven to be a problem in the area, with downtown Walgreens chaining their freezers together to deter shoplifters.

In recent months, dozens of shopkeepers announced that they would leave the city’s inner city.

Sturdy retailer Old Navy announced last month that they would be closing their flagship store in the area, becoming the latest chain to leave the city.

The closure comes after retail giant Nordstrom announced it was closing all of its locations in the city.

The company said it would close all remaining stores in the coming months due to San Francisco’s “changing dynamics.”

In April, Whole Foods announced it was closing all of its locations. Anthropologie and Office Depot made the same decision.

These stores joined the growing list of retailers that have left the city, including H&M, Marshall’s, Gap and Banana Republic.

A disturbing recent report found that 95 downtown San Francisco retailers have closed their doors since the start of the COVID pandemic, a drop of more than 50 percent.

Of the 203 retailers that opened in the city’s Union Square area in 2019, only 107 are still operating, a 47 percent drop in just a few pandemic-ravaged years.