Protests have proven to be costly to the Rochester city budget.

Police response to protests has resulted in the City of Rochester doling out close to $2 million in overtime costs since May.

Daniel Prude's death in police custody in March was revealed to the public on September 2, leading to weeks of protests.

From the end of August to ‪September 27, more than 20,000 hours of overtime were logged by officers, totaling almost $1.4 million across two pay periods.

For this fiscal year, RPD overtime is already more than three times than it was in the 2019-2020 fiscal year.

Jose Peo (D) is a city councilman from the Northwest district.

"It's kind of ironic that the fact that we were looking to, you know, what people were asking for was defunding police and putting that money toward social services, well now due to the actions of those who were demanding some things that we just couldn't get to immediately, now we're at a point where we are increasing paying our police force and decreasing the amount of money we could give to our social services," said Peo.

Peo says the city may have to borrow more money to meet the budget.

"We're facing a 25 percent reduction before, that's probably gonna be more like 50 percent at this point,” said Peo.

Both State Police and Monroe County sheriff's deputies assisted RPD during the demonstrations.

"It affects our budget too, but I think the public wants us to be as prepared as possible to assist in the peaceful protest but also be prepared if a protest goes wrong,” said Monroe County Sheriff Todd Baxter.

Things went wrong ‪on May 30 in Rochester when protests following the death of George Floyd went from peaceful to unruly. 

Sheriff Baxter says we cannot afford a repeat incident.

"Our job is to, you know, we gotta react to the environment we're in. We just need to be prepared. And we'll support, we'll support all day long,” said Sheriff Baxter.