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Canada · Paid duty
The rules around paid duty
You are in uniform, with police authority, working for someone who is not your employer. Every service puts rules around that. Here is the shape they usually take.
The rules exist for a reason
Paid duty is the one part of the job where you are working for someone who is not your employer, in uniform, with police authority. Every service that runs a paid duty programme wraps rules around it, and the rules are broadly similar even though the details differ everywhere.
You are still on duty
On a paid duty you are a police officer, not private security. You act within the normal scope of police duties, your service's policies apply, and your powers are the powers you always have. The organiser is paying for a police presence; they are not directing police work, and they cannot ask you to do something the uniform does not cover.
If an organiser starts treating an assignment as though they have hired staff, that is the point to involve the paid duty office rather than sort it out on the spot.
Hours, rest and fatigue
Most services limit how much paid duty can be worked around a regular schedule, and the limits usually deal with the gap between a duty and your next shift as much as the total hours. The concern is obvious enough: an officer who has worked a duty until the small hours and then starts a platoon shift is a problem for everyone.
Find out what your service's limits are before you plan a run of duties around a set of days off. Some limits are in policy, some are in the collective agreement, and they are enforced.
Uniform, equipment and vehicles
Paid duty is worked in uniform with your issued equipment. Where a police vehicle is required for the assignment, the service assigns it and charges the organiser for it separately — a marked unit is part of what some jobs are paying for, particularly road work.
Where you use your own vehicle to get to a duty, that is your cost and your record to keep.
Supervision
Once an assignment involves more than a few officers, services generally assign a supervisor as part of the duty, and the organiser pays for that as well. The threshold varies. It is not something you arrange between yourselves on site.
Approval, and what happens without it
Paid duty comes through the service, so the approval is built into the booking. Outside work — anything not police work — is separate, and it generally needs a written request approved up your chain of command before you start. In the RCMP that is a formal process under the secondary employment policy, and elsewhere it is usually an annual declaration to the chief.
Work that has not been approved is the kind of thing that becomes a conduct matter rather than a conversation. If you are not sure whether something needs approval, ask before rather than after.
Read your own agreement
None of the above overrides your service's policy or your collective agreement. Both are specific, both are available to you, and both are the actual answer to any question this page raises.
This page describes how paid duty generally works. It is not policy and it is not advice. Your service's paid duty office and your collective agreement set the terms that apply to you.
Keep the record that proves the year
Every duty, every organiser, the hours and the rate — and what is still outstanding, without a spreadsheet.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
