One police officer in Chicago says that the city owes him a lot of overtime compensation for the time he spent using his BlackBerry for work when he was off duty. The officer who filed the suit, Sgt. Jeffrey Allen, is not only seeking overtime pay for himself, but for all officers who used their BlackBerry devices while off duty.

Allen's attorney, Paul Geiger, said, "What we are saying is he's using this mobile device at the behest of the Police Department very routinely and very often off duty and not being compensated for all the time spent on the device doing the city's work."

NPR reports that the city of Chicago gave Allen a BlackBerry when he worked in a unit that determined what assets of a criminal the police department could go after. According to Susan Prince, an attorney for Business and Legal Resources, the case will be decided based on the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Prince says, "Basically, it comes down to whether an employee is exempt or non-exempt. Exempt employees, they make the same salaries no matter how many hours they work during a week, so using a BlackBerry from home at night is not an overtime issue for them. But when you're dealing with non-exempt employees, they have to be paid for all the time they work."

NPR reports that even an extra 10 to 15 minutes of BlackBerry use per day for work means that a worker could be entitled to a significant amount of money in overtime. If an employer knew that the overtime was being worked by the employee, the employee could be entitled to three years of back pay from the time the suit is filed.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley said, "This is unbelievable. We're public servants. If I asked for that, I'd be paid millions of dollars. We'd have to take all the BlackBerrys away from public servants." Daley also called the suit "silliness in time of economic crisis."