A Houston police officer who racked up more than $170,000 in overtime writing tickets in 2024 has been transferred out of the traffic division, the Chronicle has learned through an open records request.

Around a week after testifying in court about a jaywalking ticket he wrote, Officer Matthew Davis was transferred to the patrol division after an eight-year stint as a traffic officer, the records show.

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Officials with the Houston Police Department declined to comment about Davis’ transfer and he couldn’t be reached for comment. The Chronicle requested the reason for the transfer, but the agency didn’t provide it.

An August Chronicle investigation found Davis collected more in overtime than his base salary every year since at least 2020, and was previously disciplined for participating in an overtime scheme involving fabricated witness claims on traffic tickets.

“He doesn’t belong on traffic, because he was abusing the system in my opinion,” said Anthony Osso, a high-profile defense attorney who represented Daragh John Carter in court over the jaywalking ticket. “He stopped my client for exercising his First Amendment rights.”

The traffic enforcement division describes itself as tasked with enforcing laws to curtail unsafe and illegal driving practices, according to the city’s website. Meanwhile, a patrol officer spends most of a shift responding to 911 calls.

Davis on Sept. 9 testified in a trial against Carter, whom he had cited in earlier this year for jaywalking and who contested the tickets in court. A jury eventually fined Carter $10 for walking on a roadway when a sidewalk was provided.

Carter claims he drew the ire of Davis because he started posting on Facebook about a speed trap near his home. Carter then took to standing near the speed trap and warning passing motorists.

In the citation, Davis noted Carter was the resident who posted about the speed trap on social media. Both Carter and Osso said Davis told jurors his body camera wasn’t working at the time he wrote the jaywalking citation.

Shortly after the trial, Davis was reassigned to the northwest patrol division, effective Sept. 20, according to documents obtained through an open records request. He’d worked in the traffic division since November 2017.

Other assignments included a stint in the property room, from 2013 to the time he moved to traffic, and an assignment to the central patrol district at the start of his career, the records show.

Davis has twice been disciplined for fraudulent overtime practices, including once in 2012 for a scheme with three other officers to use ticket writing to draw more overtime money.

Davis received a 30-day suspension in 2012 after investigators determined he participated in an overtime scheme with three other officers, in which they falsely cited each other as witnesses on tickets so they’d get called into court more frequently.

The four veteran officers collected nearly $1 million in combined overtime pay through the scheme between 2008 and 2012, according to a Chronicle article from September 2012.

Then, in 2013, department leaders handed down a 15-day suspension (later reduced to a 5-day suspension on appeal) after allegations that Davis had been working a second job at the same time he was claiming overtime for his job as a police officer, according to his personnel file.

This article originally published at Houston traffic officer making $170,000 in overtime has been reassigned to patrol.