Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2007-05-21 07:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

For much of his career in the Baltimore City Police Department, Detective Albert Marcus was known as “Mad Dog.” But, for the past week, in which he heads a remarkable list of names, Marcus has become known for a maddening amount of overtime pay.

By actual count of the Baltimore City Finance Department, Marcus compiled 3,695 overtime hours last year. Assuming he worked seven days a week and took no vacations, this would amount to more than 10 overtime hours per day. Assuming he worked only five days a week, it would amount to 14 overtime hours a day. Add this to the regulation eight hours, and it comes to 22 hours a day — thus leaving the haggard Marcus with two hours per day to run home and catch up on his sleep.

Assuming the more likely slacker’s pace of only 10 overtime hours a day, plus eight regulation hours, this would leave Marcus with a full six hours a day for the business of eating, sleeping, washing, shopping, watching television, going to the movies, taking dance lessons, enjoying family and friends — and counting his money.

All told, he counted $104,423 in overtime pay last year. This, added to his $62,998 in regular salary brought his 2006 pay to $167,421, a total that police Commissioner Leonard Hamm might examine and ask, “How come I’m running an entire department, and I’m not making as much as this guy?”

But, as revealed in The Examiner last week, Marcus is only the most glaring example of a larger problem: millions in overtime pay (the finance department says $37 million; the police department says it’s only $29 million) handed out to police last year.

And, while Commissioner Hamm is correct to defend so many of his officers’ hard work, and to point out the dangers they face each day, and the dedication to duty that so much overtime might imply, it is also a fact that either $29 million or $37 million far exceeds the $8 million City Hall originally budgeted for police overtime.

It is also a fact that this is not the first time Detective Marcus has found his name in headlines.

Ask Benjamin Orlando, who met Marcus 15 years ago, when Marcus called himself the Mad Dog of the police department — he even used Mad Dog on his license plates — and Orlando called himself a Harford County science teacher and a man never accused of a crime.

Then came the night of May 9, 1992, when Orlando sold some tickets he couldn’t use at Oriole Park at face value — a perfectly legal act — and found himself handcuffed by Marcus and another officer.

“What’s going on?” said Orlando. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Shut the [expletive] up,” said Marcus. “You were scalping tickets.”

Orlando attempted to explain his innocence. He was selling his Orioles tickets because a friend, Stanley Lloyd, who was waiting in a nearby car, was ill and needed to go home. Marcus didn’t buy it.

“We got stories like this from pimps and pushers all the time,” Marcus said.

“Could you loosen the cuffs?” Orlando pleaded. “They’re extremely tight.”

“Tight?” said Marcus. “They look fine to me.”

And, as Orlando later testified in Baltimore Circuit Court, Marcus then tightened the cuffs. A humiliated Orlando was taken, bent over, through the gathering ballpark crowd to a cell where he was held for more than two hours, still in handcuffs.

“I’m in extreme pain,” Orlando cried out. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Live with it, [expletive],” said Marcus.

When the two officers moved Orlando to another lockup, they smashed his head into the ceiling of a police cruiser.

When the case came to criminal court, all charges against Orlando were thrown out. When he went to a doctor for unrelenting pain in his wrists, he was told there was permanent nerve damage. When he sued Marcus for damages, Orlando testified he no longer had full use of his thumbs. He could no longer hold a piece of chalk to write on a classroom blackboard, and needed his wife to button his shirts each day.

He asked for $500,000 in damages. A jury took only 90 minutes to find Marcus and his partner guilty of false arrest and false imprisonment — and awarded Orlando $515,000 in damages.

Marcus did not return several phone calls last week. At his trial in 1994, he described himself as an “aggressive” officer. In the right context, that’s a great term for a policeman. And, in his day, Marcus has been aggressive enough to arrest several thousand violent criminals. But it’s not so great when “aggressive” is a code word for brutal — or when it’s a cover for preposterous amounts of overtime.

Please e-mail news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com.