Boosted by what some officials consider to be out-of-control overtime spending, two-thirds of Orange County sworn sheriff's deputies earned more than $100,000 last year, according to records obtained by The Times.
Acting Sheriff Jack Anderson said he was so concerned by the figures that he has ordered monthly reports on overtime usage and vowed to launch disciplinary reviews of any deputies who exceeded the department's limit of 24 overtime hours per week.
Twenty-seven deputies were paid more than $75,000 in overtime last year, a figure Anderson said could have been reached only by deputies violating the department overtime rule.
The top overtime recipient was sheriff's investigator Theodore R. Harris, who made $120,000 in overtime, bringing his total pay to $221,000 -- more than then-Sheriff Michael S. Carona and all five members of the county Board of Supervisors. To reach that pay level, he had to work an average of more than 30 hours of overtime per week.
Harris, one of four deputies who earned more than $100,000 in overtime last year, worked most of his overtime on patrol assignments, leaving his investigator's desk for a patrol car. The bulk of the department's overtime went to employees at the county jails, who were paid $18.3 million in overtime during the 2006-07 fiscal year, compared with $8.4 million four years earlier.
Concern about the deputies' overtime pay comes shortly after the release of transcripts from a grand jury investigation that found some deputies at Theo Lacy Jail in Orange had napped or watched television while on duty, allowing handpicked inmates to discipline other prisoners.
According to records, deputies at Theo Lacy were paid $7.8 million in overtime in 2006-07. During that time, inmate John Derek Chamberlain was beaten to death while a deputy assigned to supervise him instead watched the television show "Cops" in his glass-enclosed guard booth.
Anderson said a shortage of deputies has forced the department to fill shifts with deputies working overtime. One jail wing at Theo Lacy is budgeted for 40 full-time employees but staffed exclusively by deputies working overtime, some driving from other stations to fill the shifts.
Last year, 1,122 sworn sheriff's employees were paid more than $100,000 -- more than triple the number reaching that level in 2003.
