Overland Park Police and off-duty work

Three words, and two different approvers

Most agencies use two terms and blur the edges. Overland Park defines three, and the definitions do real work.

Outside employment is the umbrella — any directly or indirectly compensated employment, consulting, service or self-employment outside the member's relationship with the City. Underneath it sit two kinds. Off-duty employment is security services, in uniform or in plain clothes, and only commissioned members may work it. Secondary employment is everything that is not security work.

The split is not cosmetic, because the two go to different people. An off-duty request is approved by the member's captain. A secondary employment request goes further up, to a bureau commander. Both start with the same form traveling through the chain of command, and both end at the Office of Professional Standards.

The renewal clocks differ too, and the gap is the widest we have found. Off-duty authorisation runs from the date it is submitted to 31 December, and a new request goes in every calendar year. Secondary employment is updated every five years. Against Seattle's hire-date anniversary, New Orleans's birth month and Baltimore's hard January deadline, a five-year cycle is an outlier.

A discount counts as pay

The policy defines indirect compensation and the list is broad: stock options, employee benefits, event tickets, goods, services, other forms of personal gain, and discounts for goods, services, admissions or rent.

That definition is what pulls the whole arrangement into view. If a venue lets an officer in free, or a complex knocks something off the rent, that is compensation and the work is outside employment.

The employer signs up to the same idea from their side. Any discount or employee benefit given to an off-duty officer must be reported in the officer's request as compensation, for the Chief to review — and the employer agrees not to provide any benefit they would not normally give any other employee of the business.

Georgia reaches a similar place through its rental rule, where the question is whether a duty is attached to the discount. Overland Park gets there earlier, by defining what counts as being paid.

Thirty hours, seventy combined

Commissioned members are limited to 30 hours of off-duty employment in a calendar week, or 70 hours in combination with on-duty work.

The detail worth having is what sits outside the count: mandatory overtime and court-related overtime are excluded. A week that runs long because of a trial does not eat into the off-duty allowance. Most policies here count every hour toward the ceiling regardless of why it was worked, so an officer subpoenaed three times in a week loses detail work they would otherwise have been free to take.

Only officers, sergeants, captains, majors and lieutenant colonels may work off duty, and probationary members may not without a formal request up the chain and the Chief's approval.

Taking leave to work a detail

This is handled more precisely than anywhere else in this section, and officers should read it carefully because the rules cut in two directions.

On rare occasions, with a supervisor's approval, a member may deviate from their assigned schedule to meet an off-duty obligation. But only vacation or personal leave may be used. Sick leave, family medical leave, flex time and compensatory time may not.

And the leave cannot be carved out of the middle of a shift. A member may not take leave partway through an assigned schedule to work an off-duty job and then come back on duty. It is the whole day, or the beginning or the end of the shift.

Compare Philadelphia, which in 2019 barred using vacation or compensatory time during scheduled hours to work outside at all. Overland Park permits the vacation day and bars the comp time — the same question, answered differently, and worth knowing before anyone assumes their own agency's rule is the normal one.

Security services, and a list of what that is not

Off-duty members are restricted to security services. The policy then does something unusual: it names the jobs they may not do — serving food or beverages including alcohol, parking cars, taking tickets, and stocking shelves.

Houston attacks the same problem from the other end, refusing a permit where a business expects an officer to enforce house rules. Overland Park writes the list into the policy and repeats it in the form the employer signs, so both sides have seen it before the first shift.

Prohibited employers are named too: liquor establishments, collection and repossession agencies, bail bonding services, employers needing access to police files, employers assisting with criminal defences or the investigation of civil cases, adult entertainment businesses, and any work requiring the member to act as a private detective under state law.

Work stays inside the Overland Park city limits without the Chief's approval. Soliciting off-duty work is prohibited outright, on duty or off, and any member asked about hiring an officer sends the enquirer to the coordinator.

What the employer has to sign

Before anyone works for them, an off-duty employer signs an acknowledgment form, and the ten points on it are the clearest statement of the bargain we have seen published.

The employer must carry the statutory limits for workers' compensation insurance and a minimum of $500,000 general liability cover, with the certificate attached. They accept that off-duty officers are hired as private security employees and not as certified law enforcement officers, and that an officer will call for on-duty assistance rather than respond as an on-duty officer unless an emergency requires it. They accept that OPPD and City policy prevail wherever their own directives conflict.

Two clauses protect the officer directly. Employers will not require officers to sign any contracts or waivers that conflict with the agreement. And employers will not require the officer, or the City, to indemnify the employer under any circumstances.

That second one is the same danger Houston refuses a permit over — a hold-harmless clause that could leave an officer carrying the employer's legal costs. Overland Park deals with it by making the employer promise, in writing and in advance, never to ask.

The employer also accepts that officers are responsible for returning to duty when OPPD calls them back, and the approval itself lapses on 31 December unless renewed.

The department posts the work and steps back

The off-duty coordinator verifies the employer's insurance, takes a description of the duties, issues the acknowledgment form, runs the annual renewals at the start of each calendar year, and conducts a site visit if the employer is questionable — a judgement call, where Baltimore visits every site annually and DC orders a survey before every approval.

Then the coordinator emails the work opportunities to members and stops there. The policy is explicit that posting a notice creates no duty or relationship on the department's part, and that OPPD will not assist in or participate in establishing the working relationship between employer and member.

Employers may advertise through the coordinator for an OPPD off-duty scheduler, who sends the coordinator every calendar work schedule at the start of the month, and any amended one after that. Schedulers may not do that work on duty, beyond limited last-minute changes.

And if an officer cannot cover a job they have taken, arranging cover is theirs to sort out with the employer or the scheduler. The policy says plainly that it is not the coordinator's responsibility.

It is a lighter touch than the city offices at New Orleans or Columbus, and the trade is visible: less administration, and correspondingly more of the arrangement resting on the individual officer.