The reason an employee continues to work beyond his shift is immaterial; if the employer knows or has reason to believe that the employee continues to work, the additional hours must be counted. Id.

In all such cases it is the duty of the management to exercise its control and see that the work is not performed if it does not want it to be performed. It cannot sit back and accept the benefits without compensating for them. The mere promulgation of a rule against such work is not enough. Management has the power to enforce the rule and must make every effort to do so.

29 C.F.R. § 785.13. ...

... If from no other source, the Department had actual knowledge through the 1987 AMIP study that unreported overtime during deer hunting season continued to be a substantial problem despite the Department's 1985 written policy prohibiting all such work. The study also revealed that supervisory personnel had failed to fulfill the 1985 directive to monitor the officers' hours closely to insure compliance. The district court found that the hunting activity that traditionally caused deer season to be such a busy period of time continued after 1985, and that there was no fundamental change at any pertinent point in the amount of work to be performed by the officers. Complaints about the forty-hour rule were common and the subject came up frequently during the district meetings.

In the face of the continued peak activity during deer hunting season and its specific knowledge that the 1985 policy against overtime was not being followed, the Department had a duty to do more than to simply continue to apprise the officers of the policy. The Department had an obligation to "exercise its control and see that the work [was] not performed if it [did] not want it to be performed." 29 C.F.R. § 785.13. The fact that some officers were able to comply with the forty-hour rule did not relieve the Department of its responsibility to ensure that the remaining officers did not violate the rule. We therefore conclude that the district court erred as a matter of law by finding that the promulgation of the forty-hour policy, coupled with the ability of some officers to comply, insulated the Department from liability.

In addition, the district court erred as a matter of law by failing to impute to the Department knowledge of the inconsistencies contained in the weekly and arrest reports, which revealed that certain officers were not reporting the total number of hours they actually worked during the 1987-88, 1988-89 and 1989-90 hunting seasons. The fact that the captains made only cursory examinations of these reports because of their own lack of time for review does not excuse them from being charged with constructive notice of the information contained in the documents. As noted earlier, an employer is not relieved of the duty to inquire into the conditions prevailing in his business "`because the extent of the business may preclude his personal supervision, and compel reliance on subordinates.'" Gulf King Shrimp. Co., 407 F.2d at 512 (quoting People ex rel. Price, 121 N.E. at 474). This is especially so where, as here, the Department specifically instructed its supervisors to closely monitor the officers' hours to ensure compliance with the 1985 policy and knew, through the 1987 AMIP study, that such monitoring was not being accomplished. ...