Baltimore Police and secondary employment

Three categories, and who pays decides which

BPD secondary employment is scheduled and managed by the department's own Secondary Employment Unit, in uniform, conditioned on police powers — races, ball games, holiday parades. Officers are paid through the city's payroll, and it splits again by who funds it: city-paid work follows the overtime rules of the union agreement, while third-party-paid work is billed outside city payroll. Uniformed secondary employment is uniformed police work not scheduled through that unit, for an employer holding a standing agreement with the department. The officer is paid directly by the employer. The policy gives university security and protection for a visiting professional athlete as its examples. Non-uniformed external employment is everything else — plain-clothes retail security, landscaping, a home improvement business, anything unrelated.

The policy explains its own strictness plainly: because opportunities exist for members to abuse overtime privileges and for employers to take advantage of department services, strict oversight is essential to organisational integrity and public trust.

Four ceilings, all at once

This is the most layered set of limits in this section, and every one has to be satisfied simultaneously.

75 hours in a work week, counting regular duty plus secondary employment. 18 hours in any calendar day, likewise combined. No more than 32 hours of secondary employment itself in a week running Sunday to Saturday. And no more than 20 hours in assignments outside those the department's own unit administers, unless the unit has no work available.

Then the rest requirement, expressed the way New Orleans expresses its own: a member must not schedule secondary work such that they will not have at least seven consecutive hours of non-employment within any 24-hour period.

The stated reason is not administrative. It is, in the policy's words, to enhance alertness and focus for the safety of the member and others. Only the Police Commissioner can order otherwise.

This agency1,981

Median of the 48682

Largest here33,721

One of 48 city departments here with a traced figure. Each number is what that agency itself publishes, so some are authorized strength and some are actual headcount — useful for scale, not an exact comparison.

Renew in January or lose it in February

Approval is per employer, and the renewal rule has teeth.

Every approved employer requires a fresh request form in January of each calendar year. Failure to renew terminates approval automatically on 1 February.

The Secondary Employment Unit audits every request form each January and sends renewal requests to each member's administrative unit. Where a member does not return the form, approval is terminated on that date and their commanding officer is notified.

Approval is also strictly scoped. Members must limit the work to the place and service specified in the approved request, and anything outside it needs a new request first. For private security duties the request has to be site-specific — address, type of business, trading name, dates and duties for each location — and that applies even where the employer is a security agency sending officers to off-site clients.

The employer gets investigated too

For non-uniformed external employment, the Secondary Employment Unit runs a background investigation on the employer, the business and its owners, and conducts annual site visits to confirm the business remains in good professional and community standing.

The approval chain for that category is long: supervisor, commanding officer, division chief, the Chief of the Special Operations Division, and finally the Police Commissioner. Where the legitimacy of the employer is not known, the Special Operations chief can direct a vetting investigation before any decision.

Employers wanting uniformed officers sign two documents — a secondary employment agreement reviewed by Legal Affairs for legal sufficiency, and a separate employment liability agreement — both kept on file for the duration.

Alcohol venues are barred unless the establishment holds an active standing agreement with the agency, and the unit is specifically tasked with making sure that rule holds. Gambling premises work the same way.

What you are, and what you carry

For non-uniformed work inside the city, the policy states it directly: members are not acting in the capacity of a police officer but as an employee of the private employer.

It follows with an unusual instruction. Members working for a private employer must give on-duty officers first consideration before taking any law enforcement action themselves, absent exigent circumstances — inside the city and outside it.

On firearms, the arrangement is equally explicit. Where a secondary employer requires a member to carry a handgun as a condition of the job, the member obtains a state handgun permit, and is then armed under the authority of that employer rather than the department.

Outside Baltimore, secondary employment is permitted only where the member acts as a private citizen without exercising police powers, uses no department credentials or equipment, does not act as a special police officer or private detective, does not run a detective agency, and is not working at a government site. Accident reconstruction and arson investigation are the carved-out exceptions.

Who cannot work it

Members without police powers, trainees and cadets, and anyone on medical leave are barred from departmental secondary employment outright.

A member on limited duty may ask, but it goes as a written report through their commanding officer to Human Resources for a case-by-case decision.

One provision runs the other way and is worth noting. Authorized secondary employment will not be suspended or revoked for disciplinary reasons unless the discipline arises from a secondary employment violation itself.

So an officer disciplined for something unrelated does not automatically lose the income. Revocation is reserved for prohibited work, exceeding the hour limits, breaching the out-of-city rules, or conduct that compromises the member's integrity, fitness or effectiveness.

Vehicles

Baltimore answers it for one half of the city and not the other. Inside the city, Policy 1702 sorts the work into three channels — secondary employment scheduled through the Secondary Employment Unit and paid on city payroll, uniformed work for an entity holding an agreement with the department and paid directly, and non-uniformed external employment — and none of them mentions a car. Outside the city limits it is explicit: a member may work there only while acting as a private citizen, not exercising police powers, and not using BPD credentials or equipment, which reaches a vehicle. Uniformed members wear all issued equipment under the uniform policy; the vehicle question is left to the documents that govern vehicles.

Every agency here, side by side on vehicles →

Common questions

How many hours can a Baltimore officer work?

Four limits stack: seventy-five hours a week in total, eighteen in a calendar day, thirty-two of secondary employment alone, and seven consecutive hours clear.

What is the seven-hour clear time rule?

Seven consecutive hours must be free of all work. It is a rest floor rather than a gap between jobs, so it cannot be satisfied by splitting the break.

Are all kinds of secondary work approved the same way?

No. There are three categories with separate approval routes, so which one a job falls into decides the paperwork.