Every week, police officers in Dade County go to court to earn overtime money on cases in which they had little or no involvement. They cost taxpayers millions. Meet some of them:

* The former Miami Beach police sergeant who dramatically boosted his pension by earning overtime in cases in which he did no police work. * The Miami police officer who spent her days off with a Florida Highway Patrol trooper making drunk driving cases. * The Metro-Dade police sergeant who appeared as a witness in 47 cases with his police officer wife. They are Collars for Dollars cops. They benefit from a system that turns arrests into money, collars into dollars. They learn as rookies from their training officers that it's easy to become a witness to a drunk driving case, even when they're not on the scene. They know as they near retirement age that extra arrests will mean a bigger pension. Most work the midnight shift, which guarantees them overtime pay for court appearances. They include some of Dade County's best and worst officers. "We back each other up. That's just the way police officers work, whether it's a traffic stop, burglar alarm, whatever, " said Metro-Dade Police Officer James Edwards, who has earned overtime in cases in which he did little or no police work. "Especially on midnights, because it's so slow, you hear somebody take a call, and you go. You got nothing to do, you're kind of bored, you go by."

An eight-month Herald investigation documented overtime abuse involving hundreds of officers in thousands of cases from 1994 through 1996. The Herald found two officers who claimed to be in two places at once, an officer who appeared in three simultaneous DUI arrests, and officers who were paid for doing absolutely nothing. All were listed as witnesses, eligible for court overtime. Some people consider it stealing. "I could see how people would say that, " said Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle. The police say they are just doing their jobs. "I believe it's too simple to rush to judgment, " said Tony Rodriguez, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents Miami officers. "A small percentage may abuse the system. The vast majority of our officers do an outstanding job."

CITY OF MIAMI POLICE Friends work together, pile up cases for overtime

In the Miami Police Department, cops congregate in the busy DUI testing room at Miami's South District Substation at Flagler Street and 22nd Avenue. There, behind the curving glass-brick facade, officers using two breath-test machines process more than 2,000 DUI arrests a year -- more than twice as many as the next-busiest testing stations in Dade. Lots of DUI arrests mean lots of court overtime for lots of midnight shift officers. Former Miami Police Capt. Jorge Fernandez, the shift commander at the substation until 1994, said he noticed overtime abuse and tried in vain to stop officers from piling on to cases. "Don't add your buddies, don't ask the other guys to come out and put them down, " Fernandez said he told his officers. "There's enough DUIs to satisfy everybody's craving for money." One of those who racked up a lot of DUIs at the south substation was Officer Barbara Shaffner, 38, an eight-year veteran who has been honored as one of the top DUI officers in the state. One secret to her success: former Florida Highway Patrol Trooper Daniel A. Smith. A frequent twosome A Herald computer study of DUI cases found that no two law enforcement officers in Dade County appear together more often in DUI cases than Shaffner and Smith, who is now with the Coral Gables Police Department. Even though they worked for different departments with differing jurisdictions, Shaffner and Smith appeared in 238 DUI arrests together from 1994 through 1996, more than any other two officers -- even those who work for the same department and ride together in the same patrol car. How did they do it?