City of Jackson to pay Mississippi PBA plaintiff police officers today to resolve overtime lawsuit
Mar 7, 2014
Forty-one JPD police officer plaintiffs represented by the Police Benevolent Association are scheduled to have their settlement checks from the City of Jackson delivered today to compensate them for time that the Department of Labor (DOL) told the City it owed to these officers for work performed from 2009-2011. After refusing attempts by the PBA and its attorney, Jeffery P. Reynolds, to resolve the dispute in 2012 by simply having the City pay the officers the overtime amounts which the DOL calculated were due to each officer, the City is now paying each plaintiff double the DOL amount, plus interest and attorneys’ fees. The settlement totals $177,500.
The DOL began investigating the City in 2011 after multiple officers complained that they were being forced to work overtime without proper pay. The DOL investigation resulted in finding that 255 police officers (over half the police force) were owed money. Rather than complying with the DOL directive and paying the officers what they were owed, the City dictated that the officers could only recover comp time, not monetary payment. The officers, though, were justifiably unwilling to concede this point.
“We were confident from the beginning that we would be able to get the City to pay our members the money they were owed,” said Tommy Simpson, executive director of Mississippi PBA. “What is so unfortunate is that the taxpayers are now paying more than double what the dispute could have been resolved for. This isn’t the first successful lawsuit we’ve filed against Jackson P.D. over overtime pay. We hope it will be the last and that the City will pay its officers appropriately going forward.”
Mississippi Division
