San Jose Police and secondary employment

Why there is a whole unit

San Jose officers have worked what the department calls pay jobs for over forty years. In 1997 the City Council passed two ordinances: one created a Secondary Employment Unit inside the department to regulate it, and one established a downtown entertainment zone.

The reason is stated rather than glossed. The city's Independent Police Auditor had found that insufficient supervision, inspection and accountability had reduced compliance, fostered potential conflicts of interest, and damaged public perception of the department. Officers were working unauthorised jobs, exceeding hour limits, and working for employers who had not met the requirements to operate a business at all.

The unit sits under the Office of the Chief and does three things: acts as a clearinghouse for requests and referrals, regulates and inspects both officers and employers, and coordinates every city-sponsored event, festival and parade.

Work permits are required for every employee, sworn and non-sworn, for any outside employment — police-related or not. They renew on the officer's annual appraisal date, which is a third variation on the renewal question: Seattle uses the hire date, Virginia Beach uses 31 December for everyone.

No bar work at all

This is the sharpest difference from every other agency here. Since 18 July 1997, all off-duty employment at businesses whose primary trade is selling alcohol has been prohibited.

Not restricted, not subject to a memorandum, not approved case by case. Prohibited.

What replaced it is the interesting half. The downtown bars and nightclubs are policed instead by a Downtown Services Detail of officers who are on duty at the overtime rate, operating Thursday through Sunday, drawn from swing-shift officers volunteering for extra hours.

So the work still happens and officers still earn from it — but the private employer is taken out of the relationship entirely. Where other agencies manage the conflict of interest, San Jose removed it.

The insurance is bought by the city

After a change to state law in 1997 requiring secondary employers to indemnify the public agency, the city bought a law enforcement professional liability policy covering the city, its officers and reserve officers working part-time off-duty security and law enforcement jobs. Secondary employers are named as additional insureds.

It covers what ordinary commercial liability policies exclude: false arrest, false imprisonment, assault, battery, defamation, and federal civil rights liability. The limit is $2 million per occurrence, and the city pays the $100,000 deductible itself.

Officers contribute. By agreement with the officers' association, each participating officer pays a pro rata share of the annual premium — $110 a year — by lump sum or payroll deduction. Enrolment in that programme is a condition of working pay jobs at all.

Workers' compensation is treated separately and honestly: the guide says it is a fact-specific inquiry turning on the duties involved, and that the city reviews secondary-employment injuries case by case rather than applying a rule.

Plain clothes is a different license

Uniformed work needs only an approved permit, enrolment in the liability programme, and an approved employer. Plain clothes is a materially higher bar, because state law treats an off-duty officer working armed private security as a licensed private security worker.

It requires a private investigator's license, a patrol operator's license or a state security guard card — plus an exposed firearm permit where the work is armed.

And the departmental restrictions on plain-clothes work are strict. Officers shall not exercise police powers. They may not use department equipment, with body armour and hand pack the only exceptions. They are prohibited from accessing department databases. And an officer working armed in plain clothes must be a genuine employee receiving a W-2 rather than a 1099.

That last requirement is worth noticing: it is the same distinction our own tax pages turn on, written into a policy as a condition of the work.

Inspections, and an audit that compares timecards

Site inspections are treated as the mechanism keeping employers, officers and the department accountable to each other. Two kinds: before approval, where the employer may be an alcohol venue or a site of chronic criminal activity, and routinely afterwards. Two to four inspections a month.

Inspectors check the business license, regulatory permits, the employer's log of officer hours, whether the job matches what the permit describes, and whether the officers on site have current permits. Where circumstances warrant, the owner's criminal history may be checked.

The audit procedure came out of a city auditor's review and is unusually pointed. A sergeant randomly selects officers each month and compares their city timecards against their off-duty timecards, tests multiple off-duty jobs against each other for fraud, and checks hours taken as administrative, disability or sick leave against hours worked off duty.

Employers pay for the privilege on a published scale: an annual fee for businesses, a much smaller one for schools and public entities, and separate permits for parades, street closures and one-day alcohol licences.

How jobs are filled

Assignments posted twenty days ahead work on priority: officers rank the jobs they want, and ten days out the system selects, taking into account both the officer's stated priority and how many hours they have already worked. A selected officer may accept or decline, and a declined job passes down the list.

Jobs posted nine days out or less are filled immediately by whoever takes them. Genuinely last-minute requests go out by email to permitted officers, or by phone.

Staffing decisions weigh an officer's specialist experience, an employer's specific request, past performance at previous events, and seniority with that employer. Active sworn officers take priority over reserves.

Two categories of work get their own procedures with a fourteen-day notice requirement: security for homeless encampment clean-ups, and joint patrols supporting park rangers. In both, the guide is explicit that officers are there to protect the staff and enforce criminal law — not to enforce non-criminal matters.