LA County Sheriff and outside employment

It starts with a statute, not a policy

The section opens by quoting California's government code directly: a local agency officer or employee shall not engage in any employment, activity or enterprise for compensation which is inconsistent, incompatible, in conflict with, or inimical to their duties, or to the duties and responsibilities of the agency employing them.

That framing matters. The department is not granting a privilege it invented; it is administering a statutory prohibition on incompatible activity. Everything that follows is the machinery for deciding what counts as incompatible.

Reporting is immediate rather than in advance of starting. Any full-time permanent employee already engaged in outside work, or in the process of engaging in it, must report it to their unit commander at once and submit the forms.

Three forms are standard — a request for approval, a signed admonition, and a county-wide report on outside employment activities. Security and teaching work require more.

And the rules do not all live in one place. A member wanting outside work, in uniform or in civilian clothes, has to conform to four separate bodies of rule: the Sheriff's own manual, the Los Angeles County Code, orders of the County Board of Supervisors, and the codes of the State of California. This page covers the manual sections; the other three sit behind them.

Ten business days for an answer

Unit commanders must advise the employee of approval or denial within ten business days of receiving the request. Few policies in this section put a clock on the department rather than only on the officer.

Before deciding, the commander confirms the employee's personnel folder has been reviewed, so that approval cannot be granted to someone whose record already puts them in breach of something. The specific question named is conflict of interest.

The department reserves the power to approve, disapprove, or impose limits on the maximum hours — so an approval is not simply yes or no but can come conditioned.

On approval, the employee is handed copies of the policy itself, the signed form, and the sections on prohibited employment, fraternisation and prohibited associations. The original goes into the unit personnel folder.

An approval is not permanent. A unit commander may suspend or withdraw it at any time a conflict or violation is identified, and must notify the employee in writing with the reasons.

This agency10,744

Median of the 131,459

Largest of the 13 sheriffs' offices 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.

Twenty-four hours, and that is a ceiling not a target

The maximum outside employment is 24 hours a week — among the tighter limits here, alongside New Castle County, Aurora, New Orleans and Saint Paul at the same figure. Only Lakewood, at 18 hours of extra duty, sets a lower one.

And the policy adds a qualification most do not: this is the maximum limit, and individual circumstances may dictate a much lower one. The number is where the ceiling sits, not what anyone is entitled to.

Members on probation may not work outside employment at all. Nor may an employee currently carrying a performance evaluation below competent — the outside job goes when the rating slips.

Underneath sits a general test: nothing whose nature, schedule or extent might impair, inhibit or interfere with the employee's performance, efficiency or effectiveness in county service.

You cannot sell the badge

One prohibition is stated more directly here than almost anywhere else, and it is about reputation rather than conduct.

No outside job may be directly or indirectly related to skills, knowledge, reputation or prestige possessed by the employee solely as a result of employment with the department.

The policy then spells out what that forbids: neither the employee nor any employer or business associate may represent, formally or informally, that their product or service is connected with, supervised by, or performed by a county employee.

Related bars follow the same logic. Nothing where the employer is licensed by the county and the department would have investigative responsibility for them. Nothing where the employer is a county contractor. And nothing using county time, property, tools, records, confidential information, vehicles or buildings.

There is a narrow escape valve: where the interests and welfare of both the department and the employee would be served, an administrative decision can be made on the circumstances.

Armed work needs the state's permission, not the department's

A distinct provision, and a practical trap. Outside employment is refused where the work requires permissions or legal authorisations specifically afforded to public safety personnel that the employee does not actually hold.

The example given is precise: a member who must be armed for the outside job but does not possess a carry concealed weapons permit or an exposed firearms permit issued by the state's consumer affairs department.

So being a sworn deputy is not itself the qualification for armed private work. The state license is — the same distinction San Jose draws when it requires a guard card for plain-clothes work.

Injury, leave and getting back to it

Outside work is prohibited during medical or family leave of absence. The exception is narrow and humane: family leave taken to care for a relative for whom the employee already receives in-home supportive services compensation, or where they are legally obliged to provide it.

For sick leave, injury or limited duty, the approval may be suspended until the employee provides medical certification that the outside work will not make their injury or illness worse.

And the requirement can outlast the recovery. On returning to full duty, a unit commander may still ask for written authorisation from an appropriate medical authority stating that the outside activity will not aggravate the injury or prolong recovery.

Military leave is expressly protected. Nothing in the policy limits or denies it for employees enlisted in the armed forces.

The second badge you cannot have

A separate section on prohibited employment does the work that most agencies fold into a list, and it opens with two provisions of the state government code rather than departmental preference.

Deputy personnel shall not hold any other position granting peace officer authority under the state penal code's definitions. No reserve slot at the city police department, no part-time commission with a neighbouring agency. Two exceptions are named: serving as a military police officer in a reserve military unit, and membership of the Sheriff's Mounted Posse.

The rule runs the other way for civilians. Civilian personnel may apply for and hold reserve peace officer status, with this department or another agency, on the same approval route. And reserve deputies may work as part-time or limited-status peace officers elsewhere with the approval of the Reserve Forces Bureau commander — though a reserve who takes prohibited work is immediately terminated from the Bureau.

Lawyers get their own restrictions, and they extend to the people a deputy practises with. No representing anyone or practising law in a criminal matter, in any instance of conflict, or in any matter adverse to the department — and no law partner whose practice may cause a conflict. The same reach applies to debt collection: no working as a collector or for any collection agency in Los Angeles County, and no partner who is one.

Two smaller ones are worth knowing because they are easy to trip over. The services of a notary public are named specifically as capable of creating a conflict. And a deputy assigned to Court Services Division who practises law off duty may not make an in-person courtroom appearance as counsel in any department of the Superior Court in the county — the conflict is being counsel in the building you police.

Private detectives, and not even a share

The flattest prohibition in the document, and it is worth reading slowly because of how far it reaches.

Members shall not engage in any employment or business as a private detective or private patrol operator — nor as an agent, manager, operator, owner of stock or officer of such a corporation, nor as a general or limited partner, nor be named on any license for one.

Then the sentence that goes further than anywhere else here: members shall not have any financial interest in any private detective agency or private security company, directly or indirectly, by way of community property or trust. In a community property state that reaches a spouse's stake and a family trust, not only the deputy's own. Any such involvement is automatically construed to be a conflict of interest — there is no argument to be had about the particular facts.

Both Los Angeles agencies land in the same place from different directions. The city police department prohibits private investigation and requires officers to divest any financial interest they already hold. The Sheriff's Department bars the interest however it is held, including through a marriage. Whichever badge you carry in Los Angeles County, this industry is closed.

Security work is a separate application

Guarding is not treated as ordinary outside employment. It has its own section, its own form and its own conditions — on top of, not instead of, everything already described.

A member seeking work as a private security guard files a Request for Approval of Outside Security Employment with their unit commander, in addition to the standard outside employment forms. And the form carries a requirement almost nothing else here does: it must be signed by the president, owner or chief officer of the security business itself. The employer has to put their name to it.

There is a second channel that this section expressly does not cover. Where the department itself has an agreement with a private entity for contract services, deputies working under it are not doing "outside security employment" at all, and the prohibitions here do not apply to them. That arrangement has its own manual section, and it is set out further down this page. The two routes are worth reading against each other before choosing either.

Not where you patrol, no bars, no picket lines

The conditions on approved security work are specific, and one of them has a carve-out that appears nowhere else here.

Members may not work outside security employment in the jurisdiction of their current assignment. But the exemption is drawn by where you work rather than by rank: members whose principal assignment is outside Patrol Divisions — detectives, special operations, countywide services — are exempt from the condition entirely. The rule exists to keep deputies from guarding the ground they patrol, so it lifts for deputies who do not patrol ground.

Two categories of premises are out. Anywhere the retail sale or consumption of alcohol is the principal business — liquor stores, bars, nightclubs. And anywhere a labor dispute or strike is in progress, or can be anticipated. That second one is rare in this section and unmistakably deliberate.

On weapons the line is drawn between the deputy and the county. A member whose security work requires carrying a firearm is authorized to carry only a personal firearm and personal ammunition for which authorisation is already on file. The county's gun stays with the county — along with county time, facilities, equipment, supplies, badge, uniform and identification, all of which are prohibited in the course of the work.

Any certification, license or permit the job needs is the member's own responsibility to obtain, and the prestige or influence of the department may not be used to get it — or to get the job.

Try not to be a deputy while you are a guard

One instruction captures the whole difficulty of uniformed private work, and Los Angeles County puts it more plainly than most.

Members shall take all reasonable steps to avoid incidents where they would be required to identify themselves as a peace officer in the course of private security employment. The aim is to keep the private job private.

And then, immediately, the qualification that makes it honest: this in no way relieves the member of their responsibilities while off duty. If a member takes police action during security work, the entire manual and all law apply — use of force, tactics, reporting, driving, ethics, obedience to laws and orders. The policy notes that police action can be as ordinary as calling local authorities and gathering information to help an investigation.

New York tells its officers they relinquish police authority in security work. Los Angeles County tells its deputies to avoid needing it — but holds them fully to the manual the moment they use it anyway. Both are answers to the same problem, and neither makes it disappear.

The other route: a contract the Department signs

Private entity contract services are the county's own arrangement, and they are not outside employment at all. The client contracts with the Sheriff's Department; the Department assigns deputies; the deputies are working as deputies.

Who may be served is drawn narrowly and follows the state statute behind it. Supplemental law enforcement services may go to private individuals or entities to preserve the peace at special events or occurrences on an occasional basis; to private nonprofit corporations that receive government low income housing funds or grants, and there on an ongoing basis; and to private entities at critical facilities, occasional or ongoing.

"Critical facility" is defined rather than left to judgement: any building, structure or complex which in a disaster, natural or manmade, poses a threat to public safety — airports, oil refineries, and nuclear and conventional fuel power plants are the named examples. So the ongoing work is subsidised housing and hazardous infrastructure. A shopping center wanting a permanent uniformed presence does not fit any of the three.

The work is for regularly appointed full-time peace officers. Level I reserve deputies may fill in, but only at occasional special events and only where no full-time officer is available to take the position the contract calls for.

And a limit on the whole programme: supplemental services shall not reduce the normal and regular ongoing service the Department otherwise provides. The contract work is additional to policing the county, not carved out of it.

One local flourish. Contracts with movie and television studios are handled separately, by the Sheriff's Information Bureau film coordinator, who keeps a movie event log and coordinates the plan for each shoot with the station concerned. Stations refer filming requests straight there.

On a contract you do police work, not guard work

This is the sentence that separates the two routes, and it is the mirror image of the security employment rule higher up the page.

Duties performed by deputy personnel on a private entity contract shall encompass only law enforcement duties, and not services that a private security operator is authorized to provide under the state's business and professions code.

Read the two together. Working private security, a deputy must take all reasonable steps to avoid having to identify as a peace officer. Working a Department contract, a deputy may do nothing except what a peace officer does. The county has drawn a hard line down the middle: guarding on one side, policing on the other, and no drifting between them.

The approval route reflects it. The client applies to the unit commander — not to the deputy — setting out the services needed, how many personnel, and how many hours. Before anything is worked, the client signs a Supplemental Services Contract, which goes to the Contract Law Enforcement Bureau, is checked, and is authorized by the division chief. Once signed it runs for three years, and further work is requested in writing under that standing contract rather than negotiated afresh.

For each event the unit commander writes an operations plan — the event, location, dates, how many personnel, how many hours, and what they will be doing. Staffing stays at the smallest unit level that can handle it, and where an event crosses station areas the primary station keeps coordination, with the division chief settling any argument about which one that is.

The county pays you, and bills the client

The money runs in the opposite direction from every other arrangement on this page, and that is the practical difference for a deputy.

Contract work is county overtime. Deputies submit the standard overtime report, coded to the contract, and it goes into the county's payroll system in the ordinary way. The private entity never pays the deputy — it pays the county. Rates are set by the auditor-controller, and by law the full cost of providing the service must be recovered.

Nothing can be worked until a private entity control number is issued, and it is not issued until the contract is approved and the client's payment record has been checked. An entity that is delinquent, has paid late, or is simply unknown must pre-pay — by cashier's cheque only. New Castle County refuses approval where a customer is sixty days unpaid; Los Angeles County takes the money up front instead.

Afterwards the unit commander sends a billing memo within five days, listing the event, every employee by name, rank and number, the hours each worked, their home unit, and the type, number and mileage of any county vehicle used. Which is the other tell: on this route the county's cars go to the job and the client is charged for them. On outside security employment the county's equipment stays home.

Overtime needs a supervisor's approval in advance unless a genuine emergency intervenes — and working without it may bring discipline, though properly documented overtime is paid either way.

Philadelphia built the same machine for the same reason: prohibit private off-duty police work, and run the demand through the department at cost instead. Los Angeles County allows both, and keeps them strictly apart.

Who pays when it goes wrong

The section ends with three sentences that an officer should read before signing anything, because they allocate every kind of cost away from the county.

Court appearances arising from the outside security employment will not be compensated by the county. Civil and criminal liability arising from it is borne by the member or by the outside employer. And compensation for injury suffered doing the outside employer's work extends only to that secondary employer, not to the County of Los Angeles.

Set that against New York, where the City will represent an officer sued on a departmental paid detail. The difference is not really about the two places — it is about which channel the work came through. New York's protection attaches to its own administered programme, and Los Angeles County's disclaimer attaches to work an outside employer arranged. What a deputy cannot safely do is assume the badge brings cover with it.

And note what the contract services section does not say. It sets out who may be served, who may work, how the contract is signed and how the client is billed — but it says nothing about liability, representation or injury. We are not going to tell you it answers the question differently, because it does not answer it at all. What is plain is that the deputy is on county overtime doing law enforcement duties, which is a different starting point from private security work; where that leads is a question for the county, the association, or a lawyer, not for this page.

Vehicles

On private security work the county's vehicles are barred along with its time, facilities, equipment, badge and ID. The Department's own contract route runs the other way: there the county's cars go to the job and the unit commander's billing memo lists the type, number and mileage of every one used, with the private entity billed for it.

Every agency here, side by side on vehicles →

Common questions

How many hours a week can an LA County deputy work outside employment?

Twenty-four, and the policy says plainly that this is a ceiling rather than an entitlement — individual circumstances may set a much lower one.

Can a deputy hold a second law enforcement job?

No. Deputies may not hold any other position granting peace officer authority. Two exceptions are named: military police in a reserve unit, and the Sheriff's Mounted Posse.

Who carries the liability on private security work?

The member or the outside employer, not the county — and injury compensation extends only to the secondary employer. Department contract work is the other route, and there the deputy is on county overtime.