Sgt. Henry Burke is out of a job after New Orleans police brass decided his time sheets did not match his time on the clock. The New Orleans Police Department fired the veteran sergeant Thursday following an internal probe that concluded he racked up multiple payroll violations and filed inaccurate time reports. The move caps weeks of public heat sparked by an investigative series on police overtime and follows earlier felony allegations that prosecutors later chose not to pursue. So far, it is the biggest personnel shakeup in a wider crackdown on loose timekeeping and ballooning overtime costs inside the department.
The NOPD issued Burke a termination letter after its internal investigation found “multiple counts of payroll violations and multiple counts of submitting inaccurate reports,” according to Fox 8. The station’s undercover team reported it filmed Burke at his home while he was on the clock on different weeks and found he collected nearly three-quarters of a million dollars between 2022 and 2025, including about $282,000 in 2025 alone. Fox 8 also reported that three additional officers are now under internal investigation linked to the same probe and that earlier felony charges against Burke were declined by the Orleans Parish district attorney and by the state before the case was sent to another jurisdiction.
Inspector general found lax oversight
Well before Burke’s firing, the New Orleans Office of Inspector General warned that NOPD overtime was running hot with too little oversight. In January, the OIG said the department failed to properly budget for or monitor overtime and found officers logged more than 260,000 overtime hours costing the city about $16.4 million from Jan. 1 through July 31, 2025, according to the OIG’s public letter. The watchdog urged consistent oversight rules, tougher checks on time entries and clearer public reporting of overtime to cut the risk of fraud, waste and abuse. City officials say that letter, along with follow-up reviews, helped push the department to tighten timekeeping and supervisory review.
Reforms yield measurable savings
The OIG and city leaders have credited a series of changes, including banning employees from approving their own hours and installing biometric time clocks at district stations, with sharply cutting overtime. Those steps produced a 45 percent drop in overtime and more than $8.3 million in savings in the first six months of 2026, according to Fox 8. The lighter overtime tab has given budget officials a quick win to point to from stricter payroll controls, even as investigators continue digging into how much questionable overtime was paid out in prior years.
Watchdogs say reforms are only a start
Longtime critics of NOPD overtime practices say Burke’s ouster is a necessary step, not a finish line. They argue the patterns exposed in recent investigations suggest a broader cultural problem around timekeeping that will not vanish with a single firing. “This is not a problem that just two officers were found doing this,” watchdog Skip Gallagher told WWL, urging investigators to use GPS records, license-plate readers and detail logs to cross-check claimed hours and to hold supervisors on the hook when abuse is found.
What happens next
Burke’s employment saga is only one piece of his legal and financial puzzle. He was arrested in February on four counts of public payroll fraud and six counts of injuring public records and was placed on emergency suspension while the case was investigated, according to local reporting at the time. Prosecutors declined those felony counts in July, and the matter was referred to another jurisdiction, leaving the criminal outcome uncertain and hinging on whether a different prosecutor chooses to revive the charges.
Separate administrative proceedings will play out on a different track. The city’s civil-service system, along with any internal appeals available to Burke, could ultimately determine his final employment status and what happens to his pension and related benefits.
