Miami-Dade and off-duty police services

Two numbers for the same hour

Almost every agency in this section publishes rules and keeps quiet about money. Miami-Dade publishes the money, in two documents that answer two different questions — and confusing them is the commonest mistake made about off-duty work anywhere.

The county's implementing order sets what the officer is paid. The Sheriff's Office rate letter sets what the customer is charged. They are not the same number and they are not meant to be.

What sits between them is stated plainly: the business contracting for off-duty services pays the employee's rate of pay, plus the prevailing rates for social security and special risk retirement, plus an administrative surcharge to cover the cost of providing the service. The three are added together and rounded to the nearest twenty-five cents, and that is charged for each hour or part of an hour worked.

So a deputy who hears that the customer is paying seventy-five dollars an hour and wonders where it went has the answer in the order: a good part of it never was wages. It is the county recovering payroll taxes, retirement contributions and its own costs.

What the customer pays, as at July 2026

These are the Sheriff's Office rates for off-duty police services, effective 6 July 2026. They are hourly, and they are what the customer is billed — not what the officer takes home.

Two columns need explaining. DROP is the Deferred Retirement Option Program, and those rates are lower across the board — roughly ten per cent — because the retirement contribution built into the charge is different for an officer already in the programme. It is the clearest illustration on this page that the customer's rate is a cost-recovery figure rather than a wage: two deputies standing the same post can be billed at different rates because of their own pension status.

Holiday rates run about half as much again. A reserve deputy is billed at the lowest rate of all and has no DROP column, for the obvious reason.

And note what triggered this letter: a change in the required Florida Retirement System contribution rate. Not a pay rise, not a decision about the market. The charge moved because a state pension contribution moved, which is what a genuine cost-recovery rate does.

These figures will go out of date. They are what was published on the date shown, and the rate letter above them is itself the second set of rates in this material. Anyone relying on a number here should check the current one with the office before quoting it.

This agency2,964

Median of the 81,702

Largest here10,744

One of 8 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.

What the deputy is paid, and how it moves

The county's order sets the officer's hourly rate: $52 for a police sergeant, $54 for a lieutenant, $56 for a captain, and $50 an hour for all other eligible employees. Those figures come from the 2018 implementing order and are the officer-side number, not the customer-side one in the table above.

They are not fixed forever. The order says the rates shall be adjusted once every two fiscal years to keep pace with the national consumer price index, rounded to the nearest dollar. An inflation clause written into the rate itself is rare — most agencies renegotiate or simply let the figure age.

There is also an upward escape. Should the permittee agree to a higher rate, the officer who works the assignment receives the higher rate. The published figure is a floor for the officer, not a ceiling.

The county states its purpose for all of this in a single sentence: rates shall be adequate to compensate off-duty county employees for their services, and to enable the county to recover the fringe benefits and administrative costs associated with the assignments. Nobody is meant to profit and nobody is meant to subsidise.

The surcharge, the minimum, and the clock

A five per cent surcharge goes on top to cover the county's direct costs of processing and recording the work. It may be waived at the county's discretion, which is worth knowing if you are the one being billed.

The minimum charge is three hours of service, whatever the job actually takes. That figure appears again and again across agencies that run details, and Miami-Dade puts it in a public order rather than leaving it to a coordinator.

Time runs from the start time and place agreed between the customer and the department issuing the permit, through to the completion of the work — and expressly excludes travel from the finish to wherever the officer goes next, personal or official. The customer is not paying for the drive home.

Vehicles are priced separately: a county vehicle is charged at $4 an hour or 5.65 cents a mile, whichever is greater. Where boats or aircraft are involved the department sets the charge from known operating costs, or from prevailing private sector rates for that equipment. Los Angeles County itemises the mileage of any county car on its billing memo; Miami-Dade puts a price on the car in advance.

The deputy never touches the money

One rule in the order is stated more firmly than anything else in it, and it protects the officer as much as the county.

In no instance shall the employee performing the service be permitted to receive, or be required to assist in collecting, any money owed to the department by the customer. Collection is the department's job. The officer stands the post and goes home.

Payment runs the other way through payroll, and promptly: personnel performing off-duty services shall be fully compensated in the paycheck for the pay period in which the work was done, or in the one immediately following. The officer is paid whether or not the customer has paid the county.

The county protects itself instead. Accounts thirty days in arrears may carry finance charges up to the maximum legal rate, and permittees may be required to leave a deposit of up to 100 per cent of the projected cost before anything is worked. New Castle County refuses approval where a customer is sixty days unpaid and Los Angeles County demands a cashier's cheque up front from a poor payer — three counties, three ways of making sure the officer is not the one left short.

Reserve officers work in pairs

Reserve officers may work off-regular duty details, as county vendors, when there are insufficient full-time officers to staff the event properly.

But there is a condition attached that appears nowhere else here: a reserve officer performing an off-regular duty detail must be in the accompaniment of a full-time officer, as a two-man unit.

Los Angeles County reaches the availability half of that rule — its Level I reserves fill in only where no full-time officer can take the position. Miami-Dade adds the pairing, so a reserve is never the whole answer to a customer's request.

What this page cannot tell you

These are documents about money, and that is all they are. Neither says who approves an off-duty job, how many hours a deputy may work in a week, what work is prohibited, what happens on injury, or who carries the liability. Those rules will sit in the Sheriff's Office's own manual, and we have not read it.

A note on the name, because it affects what you will find when you go looking. The agency was the Miami-Dade Police Department until January 2025, when it became the Miami-Dade Sheriff's Office under a state constitutional amendment requiring every Florida county to elect a sheriff. Documents written before then say Police, and the county's implementing order still uses the older rank titles. The rates letter says Sheriff's Office. Same agency.

Common questions

What does an off-duty Miami-Dade deputy cost?

The published rate is the customer's, not the deputy's: it is the officer's rate of pay plus social security, retirement and a five per cent county surcharge, with a three-hour minimum.

Who pays the deputy?

The county, through payroll, in the pay period the work was done or the next. The deputy may never receive or help collect the money from the customer.

What does a county vehicle cost on a job?

Four dollars an hour or 5.65 cents a mile, whichever is greater.