City of Independence issues statement following completion of overtime investigation

The City of Independence issued the following statement following a briefing from Special Counsel Dan Nelson into overtime at the Independence Police Department.

“We would like to thank Dan Nelson and Spencer Fane for conducting a thorough investigation and complete audit of the renovations and overtime costs related to the work at police headquarters. We appreciate the independent evaluation of the situation to help city staff, the Mayor, and Council develop and implement better oversight to ensure this situation never repeats itself. 

City staff will be studying the specific policies and procedures that need to be reviewed, and likely changed, as a result of the information from the investigation. City staff intends to have a set of policy recommendations to the Council and Mayor for consideration within the next 60 days. Per city charter, any further review of personnel issues will be evaluated by city staff. It is clear, however, that we must have better systems in place that provide easy checks and balances across all our departments to ensure we do not have excessive overtime and policies are properly followed.” 

The slides from today’s presentation are available here. 

7-19-22 IPD OT Public Presentation.pdf

The Independence Investigation Police Recommendations Report is available here.

Independence Investigation Policy Recommendatiosn Report July 2022.pdf