Brevard County deputies and off-duty details

A document written for the customer

Most agencies in this section publish what they tell their own deputies. Brevard publishes the form a business fills in to hire one — and that turns out to be more revealing, not less.

It is a two-page application, revision dated 22 November 2024, and page two carries the terms and conditions in full. A deputy reading it learns the price of their own time, which is not something an internal policy usually tells them.

One thing it establishes immediately: law enforcement off-duty details are restricted to security, law enforcement presence, traffic or patrol functions and nothing else.

The rate, printed in both halves

This is what makes Brevard worth reading. Nearly every agency publishes either what the customer pays or what the officer earns. Brevard prints the sum and its two parts.

A deputy costs $62 an hour — $50 to the deputy, $12 administrative fee. On a premium day it is $67, made of $55 and the same $12. A supervisor is $67 ($55 plus $12), or $72 on a premium day.

So the fee is flat rather than proportional: the office takes the same $12 whether the hour is ordinary or premium, and every dollar of the uplift reaches the deputy. Compare Jacksonville, where the fee is $5.50 an hour and rises to $7.50 for vehicle-heavy traffic work — a fee that scales with the cost of the job rather than sitting flat on top of it.

There is a third rate most readers will not expect: Maritime Security Officers, Port Authority only, at $35 an hour ($30 plus a $5 fee) and $40 on premium days. Not deputies, a separate classification, and priced accordingly.

The form adds plainly that rates are subject to change, and that prepayment is required unless other arrangements have been made.

Thirteen premium days

The designated holiday and special event list runs to thirteen: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Halloween, Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving, the day after Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

St. Patrick's Day and Black Friday are the giveaways. Neither is a public holiday; both are days when bars fill up and shopping centres need traffic managed. Palm Beach's equivalent list runs to eleven and reaches for Super Bowl Sunday instead. Only Halloween appears on both.

A deputy planning a year around a rotation can read that list as a calendar of when the work pays more — and every one of those dates is known well in advance.

Three hours, and who decides the numbers

There is a three-hour minimum per deputy, per detail. Palm Beach sets four; Brevard sits at the more common end.

The staffing is not the customer's call. The form states that the number of deputies and Maritime Security Officers required is determined by the agency and assigned accordingly — the applicant asks, and the office decides.

Supervision follows headcount, and Brevard escalates sooner than most: a sergeant is required at five or more deputies, and a lieutenant at ten or more. Palm Beach does not require its lieutenant-rank officer-in-charge until fifteen, so a ten-deputy job in Brevard carries a rank that the same job in Palm Beach would not.

Late requests and cancellations

Both directions are priced. A request for services beginning within 24 hours may carry a $100 administrative surcharge. A customer who cancels with less than 24 hours' notice pays three hours of compensation for every deputy who had been assigned — the minimum, protected.

The Sheriff's Office keeps the wider freedom: it reserves the right to cancel details without notice and to recall deputies for official duties when community safety requires it. A detail is never a claim on a deputy that outranks the agency.

It may also revoke any detail judged to be a conflict of interest or to create liability for the office — and the form says that revocation may be written or oral. Most agencies insist on writing; Brevard says it need not be.

What state law adds

In Brevard the statute is not background reading. Florida Statutes section 30.2905 is reprinted in full on the face of the form, and the customer signs to say they have read it and will comply.

That matters because of what it puts on them. The employer is responsible for the deputy's acts and omissions while working the detail, workers' compensation included. But a deputy hurt while enforcing the criminal, traffic or penal laws of Florida is regarded as working on duty — and the statute defines that to include providing security, patrol or traffic direction for a private or public employer. Set that against the four services Brevard actually sells, and every one of them falls inside the definition.

The statute also lets a sheriff fold a proportionate share of workers' compensation premiums into what is charged. Brevard does not itemise that separately, so it sits somewhere inside the $12.

And it settles a licensing question: off-duty deputies are exempt from the chapter 493 regime covering guards, patrol services and private investigators.

What this page cannot tell you

This is the customer's document, so it is silent on the deputy's side: how approval is obtained, what hour caps apply, which employers are refused, and what happens to a deputy who works a detail they should not have. Those rules sit in BCSO's own policy, which is not published.

What it does answer, and few internal policies do, is the question a deputy asks first: what does this hour pay, and what does the office take off the top?

Common questions

What does a Brevard deputy cost an hour?

Fifty dollars to the deputy plus a twelve dollar fee — and this is the only agency in the section that prints what the customer pays and what reaches the deputy as two separate figures.

Is there a minimum job length?

Three hours, whatever the job actually runs to.

Are there premium rates?

Yes — thirteen named days carry a premium rate.