Honolulu Police and outside employment

What this policy is not about

Honolulu draws its boundary in the definition, and it is worth stating plainly before anything else.

Outside employment means any activity engaged in for direct or indirect payment of any kind, with three exceptions: work for the department, special duty, and investing the employee's own money for personal gain. Everything else is outside employment.

Special duty is Honolulu's term for the uniformed, police-authority work that most of this section is about — and it is governed by a different directive, which we have not been able to read. So this page describes the non-police side: the second job, the business, the sales work.

That is not a small part of the picture. Much of what officers actually do outside the job is not detail work, and Honolulu regulates it more closely than most agencies regulate details.

If you work for Honolulu and can point us at the special duty directive, we will read it and add it.

The appeal leaves the department

Outside employment is authorized by the Chief of Police, who acts on every request. What happens after a refusal is what makes this policy unusual.

An employee covered by the officers' bargaining agreement may appeal the Chief's decision to the Honolulu Ethics Commission — and under that agreement, the Commission's decision is final and binding.

An employee not covered by the agreement may ask the same Commission for an advisory opinion, which the Chief then considers before deciding.

Nothing else in this section works like that. UT System publishes its criteria and states there is no right of appeal at all. Murray and St. Mary's County allow ten days to appeal to the Chief. Washington State Patrol bargained language a grievance can be measured against. Honolulu sends the question to a civilian ethics body outside the police department, and lets it overrule the Chief.

Below that level, the Human Resources Officer may act for the Chief on two kinds of request: a change of employer or of the nature of work for someone already authorized, and a new request where there is a precedent for approving that sort of activity and the employee's bureau chief agrees.

No police authority, at all

The single sentence that governs the whole arrangement: employees shall not invest their outside employment with police authority.

In practice that means no departmental uniform, no departmental investigations, and no use of departmental equipment, records, documents, files or services — beyond the normal called-for services any member of the public would receive.

Read against the rest of this section, that is close to the opposite pole. Aurora keeps its officers attached to city resources and puts them in police vehicles. Alexandria requires the full patrol uniform and a radio on any detail. San Antonio requires regulation uniform for anything that is an extension of police service. Honolulu's outside employment is a job an officer holds as a private citizen, and the badge does not come with them.

Element commanders are told to periodically evaluate the duty performance of employees who work outside, and any failure to perform departmental duties satisfactorily may cost the privilege.

The employer must furnish the firearm

An officer may not carry or use a firearm during outside employment, with two exceptions: where it is legally required that a firearm be carried in the performance of that duty, or where the employer holds current written authorisation from the Chief of Police for the officer to carry.

In either case, one condition attaches that appears nowhere else in this section: the employer must furnish the firearm. Not the department, and not the officer's own service weapon.

The officer must also disclose the need to carry and obtain written authorisation from the Chief or the human resources commander before doing so.

Compare the range. Puerto Rico writes the right to carry the service weapon into statute, conditional on the work being insured. Baltimore has the officer obtain a state handgun permit and carry under the employer's authority. San Jose requires a state guard card for armed plain-clothes work. Honolulu separates the officer from the department's weapon entirely and makes arming them the employer's act, with the Chief's permission attached to the employer rather than only to the officer.

Security work, but never bodyguarding

Officers may seek approval for sales or security work, subject to the general conditions. Two limits sit on the security side.

They may be employed by firms offering security services — but they may not own, operate or hold a financial interest in one, and, unusually, they may not donate their time or services to one either. Most policies here stop at ownership; Honolulu closes the gift as well.

And officers employed in security work shall not provide bodyguard service.

That gives a clean three-way split across this section on the same job. Fairfax County bans personal protection outright. San Antonio permits it with conditions about who is being protected. Honolulu allows the security employment but carves the bodyguarding out of it.

Two further duties apply to sales and security work. Officers must not use their police status, directly or indirectly, to influence the outcome of any business transaction. And they must immediately terminate the employment if the employer or its parent organisation comes under investigation or official scrutiny for unlawful, unethical or deceptive practices — and must then provide such information as may be required to assist that investigation. Nothing else in this section obliges an officer to inform on their own outside employer.

What an officer may not sell

The list of prohibited sales work is specific enough to have been written in response to real requests.

Barred outright: selling or distributing police equipment, or personal protection and safety devices — to police personnel or to the public; selling or distributing security devices such as locks, safes or alarms; selling any service or commodity to city or state agencies, except as already permitted through special duty; anything dealing in obscene or pornographic material, or any other product or service appealing to prurient interest; gambling devices, including pinball machines, and any other gambling paraphernalia; and drugs, narcotics or narcotic paraphernalia.

Everything else in sales is decided case by case.

The first two are the interesting ones, and the reasoning is not hard to reconstruct: an officer who sells alarms or body armour is selling to people whose need for it they are professionally placed to assess — and, in the case of police equipment, to their own colleagues.

Real estate is permitted but carries its own paperwork. Anyone applying to work in real estate brokerage or sales must attach a signed Real Estate License Disclosure, attesting to the city charter's standards of conduct: no gifts that could be inferred as influencing them, no use of confidential information for anyone's gain, no business interest incompatible with their duties, no compensation for their city work from any other source, and no representing private interests against the city.

Five percent

The most striking number in the policy has nothing to do with hours.

No more than five percent of the total authorized personnel of the department — or of a division, or of any other element — may belong to military organisations at one time.

A request to join the reserves or the national guard cannot be denied unless it would push an element over that limit. If it would, the employee must either transfer to another element where military service is possible, or postpone joining.

It is a staffing rule dressed as an employment rule, and the logic is a deployment risk no other agency here has written down: a callup that takes five percent of a watch at once is survivable, and one that takes fifteen percent is not.

Two other categories are settled by charter rather than by the department. A full-time city employee may not be employed by the city in any other capacity, part-time or on a personal service contract. And it is city policy not to grant leave to work for the state legislature — exceptions are screened by the Chief, recommended to the Mayor, and each one must be approved by the Mayor personally.

Reserve officers sit outside all of this. The restrictions do not apply to them, though they must notify the human resources commander of any change in their employment, and the Chief may still prohibit work that conflicts with departmental duties or image.

When the family business meets the city

The disclosure triggers reach further than the officer's own job, and this is the part most worth reading twice.

A request form goes in whenever the employee or a member of their immediate family — defined as related by blood or marriage and living under the same roof — gains a financial or controlling interest in a business organisation that has sought approval from a city agency for an official action during the previous twelve months.

And again whenever such a business is expected to be involved in any official action to be taken by the employee themselves.

The nearest comparison is the federal one. Customs and Border Protection requires an employee to notify in writing where a spouse or household member holds a job the employee would themselves be barred from, and disqualifies them from official matters involving that employer. Honolulu comes at the same problem from the city-contracting end.

The ordinary mechanics are straightforward: the form goes in at least five business days before the work starts, describing it in enough detail for a judgement to be made; the element commander makes a preliminary recommendation; the Human Resources Officer decides or refers it upward; and no employee may start before written authorisation arrives. Ending a job is reported the same way within five business days. Seasonal or periodic work — the policy's example is a college instructor — needs no fresh request unless something changes.