UPDATED 10/6/2026
We submitted a public information request to El Paso County for “a list of employees of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office (to include all police officers) who have received overtime pay from October 1, 2025 to the present” and for “the total amount of overtime pay for each of the employees.”
We learned that the El Paso County Commissioners Court has been demanding the same information from the Sheriff’s Office since April but has received nothing.
Susana Miranda of the El Paso County Attorney’s Office produced the documentation we requested on October 1. We asked her to reverify the figures to make certain they were accurate and then published our preliminary analysis.
But today we learned from Danielle Chavez, Budget Operations Manager of the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, that the figures they provided actually cover the period from December 22, 2024 through September 12, 2026 (not from October 1, 2025 through September 28, 2026 as we had requested).
Moreover, Chavez revised the overtime figures for many of the employees. As a result, we have updated this report and made the necessary changes to the attached chart.
Hundreds of employees in the Sheriff’s Office received overtime pay but the amount some received is astounding.
20 employees were paid between $82,883 and $178,736 in overtime for a total of $2,167,542.
Of these employees, 14 are detention officers, 2 are floor control officers, 2 are deputy sheriffs, and 2 are sergeants.
One detention officer, who earned a salary of $85,356 in FY 2025, was paid $178,736 in overtime between December 22, 2024 and September 12, 2026.
These figures are part of the reason the Sheriff’s Office was more than $5.9 million in the red in FY 2026.
Sheriff Oscar Ugarte has a lot of explaining to do.