FORT WORTH, TX - Police overtime in Fort Worth cost taxpayers roughly $25 million last fiscal year, and the city’s new police chief says that number is a symptom of a larger staffing problem he plans to fix.
Like many big cities across the country caught in the crossfire between the “Defund Police” movement and a criminal element emboldened by soft-on-crime policies, Fort Worth’s police have found themselves in a dilemma.
It should come as no surprise that when law enforcement as a profession feels both underpaid and underappreciated, high-quality candidates tend to dry up.
According to the Fort Worth Report, Fort Worth Police Chief Eddie García says he aims to fix that.
Three months into the job, Chief Eddie García says his focus is simple: hire more officers, keep the ones already wearing the badge, and reduce the department’s growing reliance on overtime.
García has set an ambitious goal for his first full year on the job: a fully staffed police department by the end of 2026. That means filling more than 100 vacant sworn positions to bring the force up to its intended strength of just over 1,900 officers.
If successful, this move would ease the staffing shortages that have pushed overtime spending to record levels and left many officers working extra shifts to ensure all shifts are manned.
City payroll records show that, during the last fiscal year, roughly three dozen Fort Worth police employees earned more than $50,000 in overtime pay alone, with two officers earning more in overtime than their base salaries.
García has described those numbers as a “red flag,” though he has also made it clear that paying overtime to officers in and of itself is not the problem. It’s not that officers are getting paid too much; rather, it’s that they’re taking in so much overtime because the department itself is being stretched too thin by a lack of manpower.
To address that, García is leaning heavily into something that has become increasingly rare in major American cities: visible support from Fort Worth leadership.
One of his first moves was to enlist Mayor Mattie Parker and City Manager Jay Chapa in a recruitment video that sends a blunt message to prospective officers. Fort Worth backs its police, and it is willing to say so out loud.
The pitch appears to be working. Since García’s appointment was announced, the department has seen a surge in applications, with thousands submitted in 2025 alone and more than half arriving after the city made its support for law enforcement unmistakably clear.
Compared to many cities where public figures publicly shame and second-guess the very men and women who allow them to sleep safely at night, García’s success in getting public officials on board comes as a huge breath of fresh air.
Whether the strategy ultimately brings overtime costs down remains to be seen. Large events, shifting crime patterns, and national security demands will always require some level of overtime. But García’s approach suggests the obvious truth many cities refuse to believe: when you paint officers as the bad guys and make them feel expendable, you end up having a hard time finding people willing to fill roles.
Shocker.
Comments