Englewood Cliffs Deputy Police Chief Receives $100K in Comp Pay, Report Says

Englewood Cliffs Deputy Police Chief Michael McMorrow will be receiving more than $100,000 for 1,200 hours of overtime he banked over the course of a decade, though Englewood Cliffs officials appear puzzled as to how it happened. 

Because the number of overtime hours McMorrow worked between 1999 and 2007 is more than double what federal law allows him to bank (480), the borough council will pay the deputy chief $34,000 over the next three years to cover 702 OT hours, Northjersey.com reported.

McMorrow's attorney speculated that the comp time was a result of McMorrow filling in for a sick colleague and working more following the 9/11 attacks. Other officials, like former borough administrator and current council president Joseph Favaro, told northjersey.com that they did not know how or why McMorrow, in his 40th year, received so much overtime. Mayor Joseph Parisi said the overtime hours should have been paid by the borough in 2002 when it hit the 480-hour threshold.

Police Chief Michael Cioffi noted in the report that McMorrow banked significantly more time than any other officer in the department. Cioffi – whom McMorrow claims in a lawsuit targeted him for political reasons and created a hostile work environment – said he was unaware of the federal statute, the paper reported.

"No one in town recognized that this had gone on," Borough Attorney E. Carter Corriston said, according to the report. "Somebody should’ve known about it."