Puerto Rico Police and work outside the legal working day

Two documents, and what each one does

Puerto Rico splits this between a statute and a regulation made under it.

The Public Safety Department Act of 2017 sets the frame. It empowers the Commissioner, after consulting the Secretary, to establish by internal regulation the tasks, trades and professions that members may carry on outside their legal working day, the maximum hours they may work, and any other necessary conditions.

The regulation itself — titled, in translation, the regulation authorising employment outside the legal working day for members of the Police Bureau — took effect on 10 November 2018 and is published in the Bureau's own virtual library as an internal regulation.

So the hour ceiling and the list of permitted trades are set administratively rather than in law. What the law fixes is who decides them, and one condition it would not leave to anybody's discretion.

The service weapon travels, but only with insurance

This is the provision we have found nowhere else, and its place in the hierarchy is what makes it striking: it sits in statute, not policy.

A member authorized by the Commissioner to spend their free time on other tasks, trades or professions in private enterprise — work not incompatible with the purposes of the Act — may use their service weapon in performing those functions.

The condition is absolute and stated in the same sentence: provided that the activity is protected by liability insurance, and that this is reliably certified to the Commissioner.

Compare how other agencies handle the same question. Baltimore tells an officer to obtain a state handgun permit and carry under the private employer's authority. San Jose requires a state exposed firearms permit. Puerto Rico keeps the service weapon in the officer's hand and puts the burden on insurance instead — no cover, no weapon.

The work itself must also be not incompatible with the objectives and purposes of the Act, which is the same conflict-of-interest test other agencies write into policy, expressed as a statutory condition.

The working day the limit is measured against

The hour cap on outside work only means something against the working day it sits on top of, and that is set in the same law.

Members performing administrative, executive and supervisory work, and those undergoing departmental training courses, are excluded from the standard working-day provisions — the Commissioner fixes their daily and weekly hours and grants their days off.

Everyone else who works beyond the established working day is entitled to be paid for the excess hours at time and a half.

The Commissioner, in consultation with the Secretary, determines the procedure for authorising, justifying and paying overtime. And the enforcement clause is unusually blunt: any overtime claim that does not meet every requirement of the regulation is null, and will not be paid.

What we can and cannot tell you

We have read the statute in full and can set out what it requires. The regulation made under it is published by the Bureau, and we can confirm its title and its effective date of 10 November 2018 — but it is served through a document viewer we cannot read end to end.

So the specific hour ceiling, and the list of trades the Commissioner has permitted or excluded, are not set out on this page. We would rather say that plainly than guess at figures.

An officer who needs those numbers should open the regulation directly from the Bureau's virtual library, where it sits under internal regulations. The link is below.

If you work for the Bureau and can tell us what the regulation actually sets, we will read it and expand this page.