Portland Police and off-duty employment

Two directives, and the line between them

Portland splits the subject in two, and the split is not where most agencies put it.

Secondary employment is work done by off-duty sworn members acting in their capacity as police officers — but only under a contract for service between the Police Bureau and a private entity, with staffing coordinated by the police association. Extra employment is everything else: any work, occupation, profession, business, partnership, self-employment or management of another person's property outside the member's City job.

Columbus divides its two directives the same way — one for work flowing from the badge, one for work independent of it. The difference is what happens on the police side. In Columbus an officer claims a job through an electronic system and the customer pays them. In Portland the officer is never a party to the arrangement at all.

Both directives took effect on 12 July 2025 and are set for review in July 2027, so this is among the most current material in the section.

The Bureau signs the contract; the union fills the shifts

There is no permit here for police-authority work, because there is nothing personal to permit. A business that wants officers applies to the Bureau, and if the application succeeds the contract is between that business and the City.

Staffing then passes to the Portland Police Association. On receiving any request the Chief's Office special events coordinator notifies the association so it can post the event on its own website for members to pick up. When a contract is approved, the coordinator tells the association so the agreed positions can be filled, and tells the responsibility unit covering that part of the city.

That is a division of labor we have not seen anywhere else. Departments elsewhere run the roster themselves through a coordinator or an app, or hand it to a third-party vendor. Portland hands it to the labor association by mutual agreement.

Two consequences are written into the directive. Where a job needs particular skills the request is routed to the right unit — motorcycle officers to Traffic Division is the example given. And if the association cannot fill the positions, the unit manager may terminate the contract before it is fulfilled. Requests arriving with less than five business days' notice may be harder to staff, though the Bureau will try.

Business Services handles billing for every contract.

The job has to be good for someone other than the customer

This is the heart of it. Contracted work must be a policing function that provides a benefit to the public, and must not be focused solely on the interests of the business.

The special events coordinator weighs four things: whether the event has a discernible impact on community safety; whether it benefits the greater community; whether the work is primarily a security function for the sole benefit of the establishment; and — found nowhere else in this section — the potential for the contract to cause disparate or unequal treatment of community members.

That last criterion is worth pausing on. Every agency here asks whether a job would embarrass the department or conflict with its duties. Portland also asks whether paying for officers would let one business or one part of town buy policing that others do not get.

The grounds for refusal are published too, and one of them is unusually blunt: an application can be rejected where the employer's expectation is that members would be present as mere observers or bystanders. Also where there is no clear benefit to community safety, where the work is for the sole benefit of the employer, and where the proposed terms are unfavourable or unacceptable to the Bureau.

What the customer is told before they sign

Two things are put to the employer in writing during the application, and both protect the officer.

First, that members assigned to the contract will perform full law enforcement functions — the directive's own example is making an arrest on witnessing a crime in progress. A business hiring officers here is told at the outset that it is not buying a private guard who will look the other way.

Second, that completing the application guarantees nothing. Approval rests with the Bureau and the City Attorney's Office.

The routing reflects that. The coordinator sends completed applications to the City Attorney for review, and only afterwards to the Operations Branch Assistant Chief for final approval. A lawyer reads every off-duty contract before an officer works it — where Aurora sends the question to Risk Management only after something has gone wrong.

Members working a contract perform their duties within the Bureau's own operational directives and mission, not the employer's instructions.

Aimed deliberately at the biggest events

The Bureau states which contracts it wants. Certain events create significant impacts on traffic, pedestrian safety and public safety — professional sporting events and large-venue concerts are the named examples — and the Bureau will prioritise contracts with the owners and organizers of those events.

The stated purpose is to offset the impact of those events and businesses on the community without the Bureau or the City bearing the cost.

So off-duty work here is being used as a cost-recovery tool pointed at whoever generates the demand. That is a policy position, published, rather than a queue of whoever applied first. Compare Fairfax County's monthly draft or Columbus's first-come-first-served job board, both of which ration access among officers; Portland is rationing among customers.

The original contract goes to Business Services, which keeps the file; a copy sits with the Chief's Office; and the Operations Branch Assistant Chief reviews all contracts annually.

The other kind: a permit from the Chief

Extra employment — the non-police kind — works the way most agencies handle everything. Members need written permission from the Chief of Police before starting, and it must not detract from their performance for the Bureau, must not discredit the Bureau or the City, and must not create an actual or potential conflict of interest.

The permit form goes through channels to the Personnel Division, whose manager checks it for completeness, accuracy and the right endorsements before it reaches the Chief. The Chief or a designee decides, and it comes back to Personnel for filing. Permits are renewed annually.

The Bureau reserves the right to cancel any approved extra employment on deciding it breaches the directive.

Twenty hours — and sixty in a week of leave

No more than 20 hours of extra employment in a workweek. But vacation and holiday time a member takes off in order to work is excluded from that count, and the directive does the arithmetic itself: take 40 hours of vacation to work 40 hours of extra employment, add the 20 that were allowed anyway, and the total is 60 hours in a week.

That makes three agencies now that let leave buy off-duty hours, and the three totals sit close together. Saint Paul allows 24 a week rising to 64 on a full week of leave. Aurora lets a member work as many extra hours as their leave took them below 40, up to a combined 64. Portland starts lower, at 20, and lands at 60.

The shared logic is worth noticing: none of these departments treats a rest day as rest. What they protect is the duty shift — and once that is not in the way, the ceiling lifts.

Overland Park and Philadelphia take the opposite view. Philadelphia bars using leave to work a detail at all; Overland Park permits vacation and personal leave but not comp time.

What needs no permission at all

Members, sworn and non-sworn, may do three things without asking the Chief: make investments, rent out their own property — unless doing so requires a business license — and enter partnerships operated exclusively by other people. All three still have to clear the no-conflict, no-discredit, no-detriment tests, and must not be likely to jeopardise the member's or the Bureau's reputation.

Rental property is the sharpest disagreement running through this whole section, and Portland now gives a third answer to it. Illinois State Police says owning rental property is secondary employment and needs a form. Cook County, three hours away, says owning real estate is expressly not secondary employment and only acting as a broker counts. Portland splits the difference on a practical test: renting out your own place is fine until it needs a business license.

For an officer with a second property, the answer genuinely depends on which department's badge they carry.