By: Stephen Stock, Dannah Sauer, and Jon Turnipseed | fox8live.com | July 30, 2025
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – A Fox 8 investigation finds members of the New Orleans Police Department working long hours for months on end without a single day off. That raises concerns for one former NOPD chief about the effectiveness of those officers and whether exhaustion could impact public safety.
“I would be worried about that officer’s safety,” former NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas said after seeing Fox 8’s findings.
Fox 8 analyzed NOPD timesheets and overtime records from 2024. The investigative team found 23 officers who more than doubled their base salary last year through overtime and extra work on paid security details.
The top earners often clocked more than 16 hours per shift, with some taking only a few days off during the entire year.
Among them, Sgt. Henry Burke, who claimed to work 16 hours or longer on 199 different days in 2024. Pay records show Burke took home $245,903 last year, nearly tripling his base salary of $83,024 with overtime and extra pay.
“Who can sanely approach their job — especially a job as stressful as an NOPD officer — and be sane without a day off?” asked citizen police watchdog Skip Gallagher when looking through Fox 8’s findings.
Burke often worked overnight in 2024, his usual shift from about 2:45 p.m. until 7:00 a.m. From Oct. 15-Nov. 8, Burke submitted timesheets showing he worked 25 days straight, averaging 15½ hours each day.
“Once you get above 12 hours a day without a bunch of days off, once you get to 16 hours a day, it’s usually (because of) a hurricane or Mardi Gras,” Serpas said.
Serpas, now a criminal justice professor at Loyola University New Orleans, said that while the timesheets for Burke and other officers concern him, each timesheet is approved by a supervisor. Serpas said he would have expected those supervisors to question the long hours before signing off on them.
“When we see examples of officers working back-to-back full shifts for a longer period of time, a sergeant or a lieutenant had to approve that,” Serpas said. “And where was that sergeant or lieutenant’s mind on the level of commitment, the level of attention that officer could give?”
NOPD policy allows officers to work what is called secondary employment: Extra, off-duty details in addition to their regular shifts. Such work is offered or required during such major events as Mardi Gras and Jazz Fest, or can be part of specialized extra patrols contracted by neighborhood associations such as in the French Quarter, the Fair Grounds or Lakeview.
Officers clock off-duty detail hours, as well as their normal and overtime hours, on their timesheets. Codes on each timesheet indicate what type of hours each officer works.
But department policy limits officers to a combined maximum of 16 hours and 35 minutes each day, whether that work is regular duty, overtime or detail hours.
“It was implemented to make sure the officers were more rested, alert and ready to go to work,” said former NOPD officer Eric Hessler, now the attorney for the Police Association of New Orleans (PANO).
Hessler says the policy works. As proof, he points to the New Orleans City Council’s action in May 2024, approving incentive payments for French Quarter off-duty details for both extra weekend and weekday work, to encourage more officers to sign up.
“Officers are free to take advantage of working as many hours as they wish, up to 16:35 hours,” Hessler said. “Some people love their jobs and work it. And other people would just rather do eight hours and go home. And I think it’s up to the officer’s discretion, as well as to the discretion of the supervisors.”
Asked whether supervisors should be monitoring the hours more closely, Hessler maintained that if officers are staying within the policy, there would be no reason for a supervisor to more closely scrutinize the timesheets.
However, current NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick acknowledges the issue is under review.
“We’re collectively looking at everybody’s payroll and hours worked. If there are outliers, we will be saying to supervisors, are you intervening and checking?” Kirkpatrick said.
When asked about one officer who worked 110 straight days, averaging 15 hours a day, Kirkpatrick responded, “I don’t think it’s safe. But then you come back to, is it a violation of a policy? It’s not a violation of a policy.”
Asked if the policy should be changed, Kirkpatrick said, “The policy has been actually changed under federal oversight. So, our policy is that an officer can work for up to 16 hours and 35 minutes on any given day. That gives them basically an eight-hour break. That’s the safety issue at hand. But the issue of can they do it, some people can work more than others and be able to remain safe and others can’t. But is it against the law? Is it against the policy? The answer is no.”
However, Metropolitan Crime Commission president Rafael Goyeneche says supervisors do have a reason to more closely monitor those long hours, for the officers’ own safety.
“If the rules allow for someone to work two months straight or three months straight of 16-plus-hour days, then those rules need to be reviewed,” Goyeneche said.
While a standard five-day work week provides 104 weekend days off per year, plus holidays and vacation days, records show Sgt. Burke took far fewer days off than that — just 71 in 2024.
Another top earner, senior police officer Brandon Coleman, reported taking just 19 days off in 2024. Coleman’s timesheets show he worked 110 straight days from March 3-June 20, 2024. After taking two days off, Coleman recorded another 42-day stretch of work. He also put on his timesheet that he worked a 75-day stretch without a day off from Oct. 18-Dec. 31. His average workday in 2024 was 13 hours long.
Sgt. Manuel Castellon’s timecards show he took just 27 days off last year. And 211 of the days Castellon worked included shifts of 12 hours or longer.
Hessler says there’s nothing wrong with such workloads, according to department policy.
“The department monitoring it, they know it,” Hessler said. “They’re put in the payroll. This is not a secret.”
The overtime and off-duty detail hours also meant plenty of extra pay for these officers.
Burke’s annual base salary is listed at $83,024. But records show he took home nearly $246,000 in 2024.
Coleman’s pay jumped from a base salary of $64,759 to $217,776.
And while Sgt. Castellon’s base salary is listed as $96,370, records show the extra work allowed him to take home $255,447.33 last year.
Payroll records show Castellon and Burke were among the top five earners in the entire NOPD in 2024.
While most timesheets Fox 8 examined stayed within the policy limit of 16 hours and 35 minutes each day, Gallagher questions how effective officers are when working such long hours without a day off.
“When they’re on duty, when they’re working for the NOPD, I want them at their peak. I want them to be super sharp,” Gallagher said.
Gallagher has been tracking NOPD timesheets for years and points to other professions that limit time on the clock.
“If you were an airline pilot, you would never be permitted to work that kind of schedule,” Gallagher said. “Think about a bus driver or a truck driver — you have to have a minimum break that requires a solid period of rest before you go back to work. And what we instead have is police officers, who have a car and a weapon, and we expect them to be coherent after multiple 16-hour and 35-minute days.”
In 2024, New Orleans taxpayers paid $15,658,285 for NOPD officer overtime alone. Goyeneche says the public should expect to pay some overtime to account for current department understaffing. But he questions some officers’ ability to provide effective and safe service when working long hours with few days off.
“Police work is, you know, on a good day, very taxing work,” Goyeneche said. “There are limits as to how many days consecutively any employee can do and still be effective in their task.”
However, PANO president and NOPD Capt. Mike Glasser says he’s grateful for officers who can take it on.
“We can’t do the same level of service with fewer and fewer people,” Glasser said. “We’re operating at about 50 percent (of) where we should be now. And it’s still shrinking.
“So, either the public’s going to be satisfied with 50 percent less service, or the people that are here are going to have to work more to make up the difference. Thankfully, they are.”
Fox 8 attempted to contact the officers in this report individually but received no responses. At our request, Hessler also reached out to the officers, but each declined to comment.
The Fraternal Order of Police sent a statement saying:
“The officers being singled out by WVUE have done nothing illegal or wrong. They are not in violation of the rules and regulations of the Department in any way, especially with respect to excessive hours worked. In fact, they should be commended for providing extra police services to our City. We are desperately in need of officers, and that they worked extra overtime and paid details is a benefit. Crime is at a multi-year historical low, and WVUE should be complimenting the Department and its officers for their hard work and this achievement instead of criticizing their work ethic.”