This amount of overtime is criminal.
NYC Correction Department supervisors, guards and other staffers pocketed an eye-popping $363 million in overtime pay during the fiscal year ending June 30 – a whopping 29% increase from the previous 12 months – as the embattled agency dealt with a massive staffing shortage, The Post has learned.
Fifty-eight of the city’s top 100 OT hogs are DOC employees working on scandal-scarred Rikers Island or in other jails, according to newly released payroll records.
Correction Capt. Rod Marcel snagged total earnings of more than $400,000 — more than half of which came from overtime. Rod Marcel/Facebook
Each clocked in at least 1,800 hours of overtime in fiscal 2025 – or an average of nearly 11 hours a day, 365 days a year, despite earlier directives by Mayor Adams for the agency to crack down on through-the-roof overtime.
Alfonso Tarantino, a supervisor steamfitter, was the DOC’s top OT king, racking up 2,105 extra hours — worth $302,091 – bringing his total pay to $453,556, nearly double the mayor’s $258,750 yearly salary.
Correction Capt. Rod Marcel wasn’t far behind, pocketing $288,241 off 2,877 extra hours work to bring his total earnings to $436,252.
Both were only eclipsed by Jakub Markowski, a New York City Housing Authority supervisor plumber who scored a staggering $331,814 in extra pay off 2,558 OT hours worked — rocketing his yearly earnings to $465,034.
Kashwayne Burrett, a Department of Social Services bookkeeper clocked in the most overtime hours of any city worker with 3,421 – the second consecutive year he’s earned the honor and beating his fiscal 2024 total of 3,303.
That averages out to more than 14 hours a day without any days off. The 11-year veteran’s $175,811 in overtime pay more than tripled his $60,409 base salary.
DSS did not return messages, but a NYCHA spokesperson attributed Markowski’s massive OT to “extensive plumbing and heating demands that are mandated and monitored by law.”
The DOC overtime surge comes as city jails have seen its average daily detainee population increase by 38% since fiscal 2021, from 4,961 to 6,823, while correction officers and other uniformed staff plummeted 31% over the same period, from 8,388 to 5,777, according to the latest Mayor’s Management Report released in September.
Although jail assaults on staff are down 36% since fiscal 2021, they’re up 31% since fiscal 2024.
Meanwhile, the agency is nowhere close to meeting — or equipped to handle — a city mandate to shutter violence-plagued Rikers by August 2027 and replace it with four smaller lockups that only hold 3,544 beds combined.
“Closing Rikers is costing us far more than it should, and the city has failed to hire enough correction officers, forcing COs to work triple tours just to keep the system running,” said Councilman Robert Holden (D-Queens).
NYCHA plumber supervisor Jakub Markowski brought in $331,814 in extra pay from 2,558 hours of overtime. Jakub Markowski/ Instagram
“This level of exhaustion is dangerous for staff and detainees alike, and it is a direct result of years of mismanagement and religious experiments masquerading as policy.”
The Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association declined comment.
However, union officials in 2022 told The Post that members’ shifts at the time were so long – in large part because disgruntled staffers were quitting and calling in sick at unprecedented levels — that many slept in their cars in the parking lot between shifts rather than lose sleeping commuting to and from work.
In fiscal 2019 before the pandemic, DOC staff clocked 3,153,573 overtime hours costing taxpayers $181.8 million. The agency saw a slight uptick in overtime usage over the next two years before its overtime skyrocketed to 5,369,074 hours in fiscal 2022, costing $259.8 million, with some staffers clocking in more than 100-hour work weeks.
DOC overtime dropped to 3,803,566 hours by fiscal 2024, but OT payouts rose to $282.5 million as salaries increased across the board.
Overtime hours clocked by DOC staffers last fiscal year increased by 10.5% to 4,202,021 hours, accounting for $363.4 million in payouts.
“Following a staffing crisis in state prisons, the NYC Department of Correction saw an influx in the number of people in our care who could not be transferred to state custody,” the agency said in a statement.
“This crisis contributed to increased overtime spending, among other factors. The department is vigorously recruiting new talent at all levels.”