Aurora Police and secondary employment

Jobs go by seniority, and the list keeps its place

Most agencies distribute detail work first-come, first-served, or by a monthly draft. Aurora uses department seniority, and the mechanism is worth understanding because it is unusually fair for something built on seniority.

When a long-term assignment comes free, eligible members are listed by seniority and the offer starts at the top, moving down until somebody accepts. The important part comes next: the following assignment is offered to the next member on the list, not to the top of it again. The pointer keeps its place, so the same senior officers cannot take every job that appears.

Nobody may hold more than two long-term jobs unless the list has been exhausted and one is still open — and a member already holding two may still apply for one-off work.

A long-term assignment can be held indefinitely on one condition: the member works at least 75% of its shifts. Fall below that and it goes back to the list.

There is a rule against gaming it, and it is stated plainly: members are prohibited from accepting assignments in order to hold the position and then routinely finding replacements to cover them.

Short-notice jobs — less than five days out — are notified to everyone, but the unit may also go down the eligible list and pick people directly to fill them.

Leave buys you more hours, not fewer

The hour limits are conventional at first glance. A maximum of 24 hours of secondary employment in a seven-day cycle running Saturday to Friday. 64 hours combined across regular duty, voluntary overtime, mandatory overtime and secondary work. 16 hours in any 24-hour period measured from the member's first reporting time.

Then comes a provision that runs the opposite way to every other agency in this section. A member who takes vacation or compensatory time, and therefore works less than 40 hours that week, may increase their secondary employment hours by the same amount, up to the 64-hour total.

The policy works the example: ten hours of vacation, ten more hours of secondary employment available.

Set that against the rest. Overland Park permits vacation leave for a detail but bars comp time. Newport News lets the squad's staffing veto the leave entirely. Philadelphia bans using vacation or comp time to work outside at all. St. Mary's County counts pre-scheduled overtime as duty time and shrinks what is left. Aurora treats the week as a fixed budget of hours: what regular duty does not spend, secondary employment may.

Two limits stop it becoming a loophole. A member's regular schedule may not be routinely altered to fit secondary work around it, and a shift may not be split in order to work a job in the middle of it.

Miss a job and the clock starts

Secondary assignments are treated as duty assignments, and Aurora publishes what happens when one is missed. No other agency here does.

For an unexcused failure to appear, or appearing late, across a rolling twelve months: a first offence suspends eligibility for 30 days, a second for 90 days, and a third for 365 days. Flagrant cases may be dealt with more severely, and revocation arrives by email.

Working an assignment while ineligible brings formal discipline on top. And a no-call no-show is handled exactly as it would be for a regularly scheduled duty shift.

A member who cannot work a job is responsible for finding the replacement. Failing that, there is a five-step procedure: note it in the extra-duty system, tell the employer, email the secondary employment office, record in the system everyone who was spoken to, and — for safety — telephone any other member assigned to the same job.

Where a shortage happens outside the coordinator's working hours, the eligible member database is opened online so members can ring round and fill the gap themselves.

If your partner does not show, you leave — and you are paid

Where alcohol is sold or served and consumed on the premises, a minimum of two members must be present at all times. That two-officer floor recurs across this section — Columbus, Newport News and Lexington all set it.

Aurora is the only one that says what to do when the second officer does not arrive.

The member who is present tries to reach the missing one. If they are not coming, the member present tells the business that for safety reasons the shift will not be covered, and leaves. They then notify an on-duty lieutenant, who authorises two hours of city overtime, which the member enters into the city timekeeping system with notes explaining what happened.

So the officer is not left choosing between working a bar alone and going home unpaid. The department carries the cost of the abandoned job itself.

The same logic applies earlier in the process: if the required number of positions cannot be filled 48 hours before an assignment starts, the job is canceled outright and nobody works it.

Above that, staffing scales by rank. Four or more members at one location requires a sergeant or above present. No supervisor covers more than ten members. Four or more supervisors at one location requires a Command Officer on site throughout, and where several supervisors are present one is designated supervisor-in-charge, by seniority or by volunteering.

You stay on the city's side of the line

Where most agencies push the officer away from department resources during outside work, Aurora keeps them attached.

Members acting in their official capacity may use city resources — office equipment, records, information — while engaged in secondary employment, subject to city policy. Police vehicles will be used where available. At the end of the shift the member verifies the hours worked and whether a city vehicle was used, and Business Services bills the employer for fleet and administrative fees.

If an arrest or other police action runs past the end of the secondary shift, the member is compensated by city overtime for the extra hours. Reports that are not time-sensitive are completed within four days; time-sensitive ones can be done on overtime with a watch commander's approval.

The duty to act reaches beyond the property line. Members must give reasonable assistance to anyone asking for help with an incident, even where it originated off the site they are working, whether by taking immediate action to protect life and property or by getting the caller to the emergency line for an on-duty unit.

Body-worn cameras and contact data collection apply exactly as on duty. And the house-rules line is drawn in one sentence: members enforce the law, and will not act to enforce an employer's rules and regulations where those are not violations of law.

What the department will not promise

The legal review section is short and every officer in the section should read something like it.

Secondary employment roles are generally considered within the scope of a member's employment with the Department. But authorisation to work does not guarantee that the City will defend the member or pay a judgment arising from acts or omissions alleged against them on a secondary assignment. Whether the member was within the scope of employment is decided case by case by the city's Risk Management Office — after the event.

The Department therefore strongly recommends that each member arrange their own insurance to cover liability from secondary work.

Newport News tells officers to buy their own cover where the employer provides none. Aurora recommends it to everybody, including officers working in full patrol uniform in a city vehicle. It is the clearest statement in this section that being on the department's side of the line for equipment purposes does not settle the question of who answers for what happens.

Getting on the list, and staying on it

Eligibility is an annual form countersigned by the member's immediate supervisor, plus a training video signed off in the department's policy system before any work is done.

The unit maintains a list of members who are ineligible, and the Chief's office notifies it whenever someone goes on administrative leave, restricted or limited duty. Suspension, light duty and a performance improvement plan are all listed as restrictions. An ineligible member may write to the Chief asking for an exception.

Recruits from the basic academy wait until probation is complete. Lateral academy recruits may work once they finish field training, even though still on probation, and need no separate approval — a sensible distinction few policies bother to draw.

Undercover members may be authorized for limited secondary work, but only by memo approved by their commander and the Chief, held on file.

The rest of the frame: no brokering, no acting as agent or negotiator for other members, no working on commission or taking a percentage of another member's pay. No two secondary jobs at once, and none at all while on duty. Nothing outside Aurora city limits without the Chief's specific approval. The authorized patrol uniform only, not specialist unit uniforms. Dispatch is notified at the start of every shift with the number of members, the address and the hours. No family, friends or visitors may accompany a member on an assignment without the employer's and the Chief's approval. And if a strike or similar labor dispute arises at the firm, the member seeks command instruction immediately.