Overtime has to be approved by supervisors. Officers can’t just decide to arrest someone with 1 minute to go before the end of each shift to pad their paycheck. They have to find another officer to hand off the arrest processing if they don’t have enough time remaining in their shift. Source: California police officer married to my sibling.

Also I think tptacek’s core point holds. Scarcity is the civilian’s best friend: scarcity of LEOs, scarcity of their shift hours, and scarcity of their time to collect some info which has absolutely zero bearing on their current case.

No doubt some LAPD gang unit officers may request this data more frequently from suspected gang members (even if it doesn’t sound like an optional request), but I tend to think tptacek’s suggestion that this article could have been better written by informing the reader when they are legally obligated to comply with police requests and when they can be denied without increasing any legal liability.