With police/fire, those numbers are a little distorted because often a lot of the overtime is detail pay, which is paid by private parties (bars, concerts, etc)

With police/fire, those numbers are a little distorted because often a lot of the overtime is detail pay, which is paid by private parties (bars, concerts, etc) after routing through the department. So it shows as a government payroll but it's not coming out of your tax dollars. And I'm sure there are plenty of idiots who got entrenched and earn more than they're worth, but that's the same in any large bureaucratic org, public or private.