Dallas Police Department and secondary employment

Three kinds of second job

Detroit splits its rules into two words. Dallas uses an umbrella and puts three things under it.

Secondary employment is the whole category. Inside it, extra-duty employment is work conditioned on the actual or potential use of law enforcement powers — and the definition expressly includes unpaid services. Off-duty employment is work that does not require those powers, and it expressly includes self-employment. Traffic control, non-recurring jobs and special events are named alongside them.

One definition is worth stopping on. Free or reduced rent is listed as a type of secondary employment in its own right: work where the officer is paid in a rental home, apartment or townhome that is also their primary residence. Kansas City defines the courtesy officer and then does not track them. Dallas puts the arrangement in the definitions, which brings it inside every rule that follows.

The philosophy paragraph is blunt about where responsibility sits: the employee is ultimately responsible for all things related to secondary employment, and the same standards of conduct and performance apply as on duty, including the use-of-force orders.

The state license exemption, quoted in full

Texas licenses private guards, patrolmen and watchmen. Dallas reproduces the statutory exemption inside its own order rather than pointing at it, and the conditions are worth knowing because they are not automatic.

The licensing chapter does not apply to a full-time peace officer paid for private guard or patrol work — provided the officer is employed directly by the recipient of the services or by a licensed company, is not in the employ of another peace officer, is not a reserve officer, and works as a peace officer on average at least 32 hours a week, at no less than minimum wage, with all the benefits a peace officer receives.

Compare Florida, which exempts off-duty deputies from its equivalent licensing regime outright. Texas conditions the exemption, and one of the conditions bites on the arrangement this section keeps meeting — the officer who works for another officer. The statute also defines an extra job coordinator separately, as a full-time peace officer who schedules other full-time peace officers who are not employed by them.

Sixteen hours in a rolling 24, and a named week

Total on-duty and secondary employment hours are limited to 16 hours in any consecutive rolling 24-hour period, and may not exceed 80 hours in a single work week — with the week defined as Wednesday to Tuesday.

Naming the week matters more than it looks. A weekly cap with no stated week can be read from whichever Sunday suits, and the officer and the auditor can reach different answers honestly. Dallas fixes the frame.

The rolling 24 puts Dallas alongside Fairfax County and King County rather than the agencies that count from the start of a shift — and Kansas City, which slides the window forward or back depending on whether the officer is on an 8, 10 or 11-hour plan.

One more rule closes a gap the caps would otherwise leave. Accrued leave may not be used to work secondary employment where the work is on a regularly scheduled daily, weekly or monthly basis, or any time it splits the workday. Saint Paul, Aurora and Portland let leave buy extra off-duty hours; Dallas stops leave being converted into second-job time at all.

The sick-leave bar is the widest in this section

No secondary employment within 24 hours from the beginning of the shift the employee failed to report for, and the list of what triggers it is longer than anywhere else.

Personal illness or injury, any other use of sick time, and leave under family and medical leave law. Then, spelled out: paid parental leave, sick leave used to care for someone else, and preventive care — physicals, routine check-ups, dental. And then the provision that closes the obvious workaround: it also applies where the employee is using vacation, attendance incentive leave, compensatory time or any other leave because they have exhausted their sick leave.

There is one carve-out, and it is a sensible one. An employee with approved intermittent family and medical leave may work secondary employment outside their duty hours once the 24-hour period has passed. Somebody thought about the officer managing a chronic condition.

Elsewhere in the general orders the balance is struck the other way: off-duty privileges are not revoked for sick time usage generally, except as this order allows. The bar is tied to the specific shift, not to a pattern.

Nobody works for their own subordinate

Supervisors may not work any secondary employment where they report directly to a departmental subordinate, supervise the person, or are placed working for any lower-ranking employee.

But the order draws a line inside that rule: it does not apply where the lower-ranking employee is simply the coordinator. Coordinating is not commanding. Senior corporals are excluded from the definition of supervisor for this purpose.

Saint Paul reaches the same worry from the other end, barring a scheduler from scheduling anyone in their own chain. Dallas regulates the employment relationship instead of the scheduling one.

Two probation bars sit alongside it: police officer trainees at every stage are not authorized, and professional staff may not work secondary employment until they are off initial probation. Both must contact the secondary employment team to be enabled in the system once cleared.

And officers may not solicit extra-duty work from any private citizen or organisation at all.

Sixteen ways to be refused

The denial list is the longest in the section, and several entries appear nowhere else.

The familiar ones: collecting bills or cheques, domestic difficulties, work that interferes with assigned duties, performance below satisfactory standards, limited-duty status, exceeding the hour caps, locations frequently visited by convicted felons, suspicion of illegal activity, and anything tending to bring discredit.

The distinctive ones. Work outside the Dallas city limits is refused unless the Chief approves it in writing, by memorandum through the chain, with the decision copied back to the secondary employment team. Work during the employee's lunch hour on an administrative workday. Anything conflicting with previously scheduled court or grant overtime. Work for a party to a labor dispute, or to a political or ideological controversy, where it could reasonably read as the department endorsing or condemning a position. Work for any public utility corporation holding a franchise with the city, except as one named ordinance allows.

And sexually oriented businesses as defined by city ordinance — including the parking lot and surrounding area. Detroit bars work inside such premises; Dallas extends the bar to the ground around them.

Expert witness work is handled by permission rather than prohibition: no secondary employment, and no serving voluntarily, as an expert witness for a civil litigant or for a criminal defense in any jurisdiction, without the Chief's approval.

Fifteen feet from the door

Officers may not own, operate or work inside a business whose principal purpose is dispensing or selling alcohol. But approved alcohol venues exist, and the rules for them are the most precisely drawn spatial provisions in this section.

Getting a venue approved takes a long-form application through two Division Commanders, review by the Special Investigations Division and the Nuisance Abatement Unit, and approval by the secondary employment team. It can be suspended or revoked at any time — on safety grounds, on an investigation into the business, its management or its owner, on charges pending against them, or on a conviction.

Then the geometry. Two officers at each approved location, and if the second does not show the first may not work without a replacement. Officers patrol the parking lot only — owned or leased by the business, used by its patrons. If the business has no parking lot, officers stand fifteen feet from the door.

They may enter only where immediate police action is required, and then return to the lot. They may enter to tell the employer they have arrived or finished. They may not stand at or near the entrance in any way that gives the appearance of working the door. And they may not go inside to eat or take a break — the order names the radio signals for both, and says the intent is that officers do not congregate inside.

All alcohol-related violations are to be strictly enforced and intoxicated people prevented from driving. The officer is there as an officer, not as the venue's doorman — and the fifteen feet is what that looks like when written down.

Supervision in four tiers

Where a job needs five or more employees, the ratios are set out as a ladder:

At least one sergeant or above for five. For every additional ten employees, another sergeant. For every three supervisors, a lieutenant or above. For every two lieutenants, a captain, major or chief. The order writes them as ratios — 5:1, 10:2, 15:3:1, 30:6:2:1 — and says the purpose is officer safety and adequate span of control.

Nobody else goes to four levels. Saint Paul stops at commander for ten or more; Detroit adds a second supervisor above six; Kansas City scales by crowd size instead of headcount.

Separately, hazardous locations get a two-officer minimum. A Division Commander may designate any extra-duty location in their area as a mandatory two-employee site, notify the secondary employment team by memorandum, and the team keeps the list citywide. Any job where a threat of violence has been expressed or is believed imminent needs two as well.

If the second officer fails to show at such a location, the first may not work the job. They notify the on-duty watch commander for that division, and make every reasonable effort to tell the employer that nobody will be there. Designations are reviewed twice a year.

The list of suspended businesses

The secondary employment team maintains a list of every location and business suspended from having secondary employment at all.

The list records who suspended it — a Division Commander, the Special Investigations Unit, or the Nuisance Abatement Squad. The team reviews the list monthly, and every six months the suspending authority decides whether the location can come back. If they lift the restriction early, they tell the team and the location is reinstated.

St. Mary's County publishes standing approved and not-approved lists. Dallas's version records the authorship of each decision and puts it on a review clock, which is the difference between a list and a process.

The system, and the audit

The order names its scheduling platform, RollKall, and says it is the only approved application. Then it documents it at a level of detail no other policy attempts: how to build a profile, that the police ID field takes the employee number, that supervisors and coordinators must use their city email address while others may use a personal one, and that every user uploads their departmental identification card front and back.

Two mechanics are worth knowing. A flex job lets the employee arrive any time within the job's window, clock in on arrival, work the minimum hours and clock out. And the call-off button is set department-wide to 24 hours — beyond that you can drop a job in the app, but inside it you must contact the coordinator, who decides whether a replacement can be found. Kansas City sets the equivalent threshold at 14 days.

Coordinators are paid and regulated. They coordinate off duty, so that the coordination fee applies, and may only do it on duty for immediate circumstances requiring minimal effort. They are paid through a coordinator job created in the system, one per client. And they carry the equipment invoices: submitted to the fleet squad by the 15th of the following month, with a written extension available once, never twice, and repeat failures inside six months escalating to training and then possible removal from that job.

The audit is the part that would change an officer's life most. Every first-line supervisor audits every secondary employment entered and worked by every one of their direct subordinates, every month, explaining any discrepancy. In-compliance forms route to the Division Commander and into a bureau folder. Not-in-compliance forms go to the same folder with a memorandum to the Bureau Commander listing the violations and what was done about them. On top of that the secondary employment team runs its own monthly random compliance audits.

This is what a policy looks like after an audit finds the department cannot see what its officers are doing. Kansas City replaced annual renewal with continuous verification; Dallas kept the paperwork and added a monthly inspection of everyone.

The non-police side

Work needing no police powers — including running your own business, commission work, or any compensation from anyone other than the city — goes on a separate form through the Division Commander to the secondary employment team.

It is renewed twice a year, on 1 January and 1 July. That is the shortest renewal cycle in this section; the nearest is Illinois State Police's semi-annual review, and most agencies renew annually or not at all.

You also file the form when you stop a job, showing you no longer work it — the same duty to report the ending as the beginning, which few policies bother with.

And anyone teaching law enforcement courses off duty must give a verbal disclaimer before instructing, that the subject matter does not necessarily represent the views of the Dallas Police Department but rests on the instructor's own opinion and experience.

Four rules for the job itself

You do not enforce the house rules. An officer may not enforce the company policies or house rules of an extra-duty or traffic control employer unless doing so is a law enforcement activity in its own right.

You do not become their information service. An officer may not use their city employment to obtain or give a secondary employer anything the public could not get, or would have to request formally. Asked for it, they must tell the employer there is a potential conflict and they cannot help, refer them to the Division Commander, and point them at the office that handles formal requests.

You do not stay in the room. An officer may not remain present while a private security or investigative agency, or a private individual, conducts a civil or criminal investigation — and may not assist one.

You do not drink, or look like you are. No alcoholic beverages while working police-related extra-duty jobs, and nothing that might appear to be one.

Departmental letterhead, records, insignia, badges and logos may not be used to seek secondary employment without the Chief's approval — though saying you are a Dallas police officer, and handing over your CV, is expressly fine.