Berkeley police spending has ballooned in recent years and the biggest reason is police overtime, a new report by the city auditor found.

In 2020, police outspent their overtime budget by $5.25 million, and police used overtime to keep an outdated minimum number of officers on the street, City Auditor Jenny Wong said.

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Keith Burbank is currently a fulltime reporter covering Alameda County and Oakland news for Bay City News. He has also worked on the Data Points project for Local News Matters, finding trends and stories about the region through data. In 2019, he was a California Fellow at the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, producing a series about homeless deaths in Santa Clara County. He worked as a swing shift editor for the newswire for several years as well. Outside of journalism, Keith enjoys computer programming, math, economics and music.