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A Department of Human Services Police vehicle parked outside the department building on S. Warren St. Trenton. Members of the police department earned more than 52,000 in overtime pay to prepare for a case of Ebola.
(Tony Kurdzuk | The Star-Ledger)
TRENTON — The Ebola scare last fall translated into a big pay day for some members of the Human Services Police Department who logged more than 900 hours of overtime scouting out a quarantine location for potentially ill West African travelers and guarding an empty hospital to house them, NJ Advance Media has learned.
The cost to taxpayers: $52,770 in a little more than three weeks, Human Services spokeswoman Nicole Brossoie said.
The quarantine site, Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Lebanon Township, has not been needed. There have been no out-of-state travelers who have come into contact with the deadly virus since Maine nurse and Doctors Without Borders volunteer Kaci Hickox arrived at Liberty International Airport on Oct. 24 after treating Ebola patients in Sierra Leone. Hickox was isolated in a unit at University Hospital in Newark until she was deemed healthy on Oct. 27.
With the expectation that more sick people would arrive at the airport - only one of five in the nation accepting passengers originating from West Africa -- state health and law enforcement officials searched for a secure location to isolate asymptomatic West African travelers, Brossoie said. When Hagedorn was chosen, police officers were assigned to patrol the grounds around the clock to keep out the media and trespassers.
The security assignment lasted 23 days until Nov. 19.
Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital in Lebanon Township was designated a quarantine site for West African travelers who live outside the state and potentially had been exposed to Ebola.
Human Services Police logged 953 hours for "emergency preparedness related to the Ebola Virus Disease," according to information obtained by the Open Public Records Act. Of those hours, 908 were paid at the overtime time-and-a-half rate, Brossoie said.
Most of the hours were spent providing security for Hagedorn Psychiatric Hospital, but there were other duties, she said. They also worked with state and local police, state and local health department representatives to coordinate transportation needs, establish a chain of command with an outline of responsibilities, compile a list of key contacts, according to Brossoie.
The 953-hour overtime figure that appeared in the recent records request is significantly higher than the 557 hours cited by Human Services when NJ Advance Media requested the information in November.
The overtime numbers differ because the lower figure "was as accurate a count as we had in November," according to Brossoie's email. "In early December," when Congress considered reimbursing states' Ebola-related expenses, "timekeeping records were updated in order to more accurately capture this specific overtime assignment."
The 86-member Human Services Police Department, which patrols state psychiatric hospitals and developmental centers, accompany child welfare workers to dangerous neighborhoods and searches for missing children, has long been criticized for running up excessive overtime expenses. The security detail at Hagedorn coincided with the overtime-cutting strategy of disbanding of a 23-member unit within department assigned to the Department of Children and Families.
The unit worked daytime hours but child welfare field workers often needed help after normal business hours, requiring overtime pay. Now officers are dispatched from one of three psychiatric hospitals across the state 24 hours a day.
Child welfare union representatives have panned the change, saying officers are not available when they need them, and they feel less safe without the police presence in their offices.
On Nov. 17 - two days after the unit was disbanded -- a child welfare caseworker in Camden was confronted in her office and stabbed more than 20 times by a client she had been supervising. Security guards have since been assigned to the offices, but the departments of Children and Families and Human Services have declined to reinstate the dedicated police unit.
Despite the Ebola-related overtime, overtime expenses are declining, Brossoie said. Officers earned $3 million in overtime in 2010; $3.2 million in 2013; and $2.9 million in 2014. From July 1 to December 31, 2014, the first half of the current fiscal year, overtime costs ran $1.3 million, according to state records.
"If it continues at the current rate, we still expect to be below last year's overtime spending," according to Brossoie's email.
The decline also coincides with the closing of three state institutions since 2013. PBA officials and their attorney Stuart Alterman have said the overtime issue points to the need to hire more officers, which the administration won't do. Alterman could not be reached for comment.
Human Services police officers on average earn in the high-$70,000 range and sergeants in the $80,000 range, according to state payroll records.
Three members of the department more than doubled their salaries in the first half of the current fiscal year by working overtime. They included Neil Long, who earned $31,064 in salary and $32,338 in overtime; John Harris, who earned $32,390 in salary and 43,669 in overtime; and David Coombs, who made $43,876 in straight time and $49,978 at the time-and-a-half rate. Dispatcher Imelda Rinchinson-Moore earned $34,427 in addition to her $27,259 regular pay.
Susan K. Livio may be reached at slivio@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SusanKLivio. Find NJ.com Politics on Facebook.