City reviews off-duty police officer rules

The Minneapolis City Council is taking another look at how to better manage the decades-old practice of allowing city police officers to make money while working independently when they are officially “off-duty.” 

Scrutiny into freelance police work followed two police killings in Minneapolis. When Mohamed Noor started his 10-hour shift as a Minneapolis police officer on the night he killed Justine Ruszczyk in southwest Minneapolis, he had just finished a seven-hour shift working off-duty as a security guard. After Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd, he also pled guilty to tax fraud related to not declaring off-duty income. Chauvin was also identified as an officer who helped coordinate and assign this kind of work. 

The work occurs when a city law enforcement employee works as a Minneapolis police officer for another agency or private entity as an independent contractor in their spare time. It usually involves security or traffic control. 

On May 23, 2024, the council instructed their staff to perform a fiscal analysis and make recommendations on how the city might administrate fees to recover costs related to such off-duty work. The report is to be made by July 24.

This follows a similar directive and report from 2023 that led to few reforms, including more efforts to track the hours worked. 

“Unfortunately, that directive came back incomplete,” said Ward 2 Council member Robin Wonsley, “so this week I reintroduced this work as a legislative motion, which will move it to the Policy and Research division of the legislative department.” 

“I support the ongoing evaluation of off-duty police work. And I support the ongoing work to increase transparency and accountability surrounding this off-duty police work,” said Ward 11 Council Member Emily Koski. “I do believe the city should be properly compensated or reimbursed for the use of its resources, vehicles, tech, etc.” 

Concerns about how it is managed are not new and are shared by some small business owners as well as police reform advocates.

“It’s absurd that Minneapolis cops get to use taxpayer funded squad cars, weapons, equipment, etc., for freelance work that the city has no control over,” said Kevin Brown, who owns a small business in Seward. 

“Taxpayers currently fund the use of squads, fuel, equipment and liability for off-duty work while deriving none of the benefits,” said longtime police reform advocate Michell Gross of Citizens United Against Police Brutality.  

The Department of Justice report released last June found that “off-duty employment also undermines supervision at MPD. Private entities can hire off-duty MPD officers to provide security. In Minneapolis, these jobs can pay significantly more than overtime at MPD – up to $150–175 per hour, according to a commander. MPD allows officers to use its squad cars (and gas), and the officer keeps all the compensation. The city has nothing. Some patrol officers manage these opportunities, deciding who gets the lucrative work. Because MPD allows patrol officers to control whether supervisors get off-duty employment opportunities, supervisors have ample disincentive to hold officers accountable.”

Previously, there was a city auditor’s report in 2019, and Mayor Jacob Frey established a task force in January 2020 that has yet to produce any work product. 

“After the audit was released in 2019, Frey set up a Task Force, with Chief of Police, union rep, mayor’s rep, and Palmisano as City Council rep,” said Brown. “About a year later, I tried to follow up with the mayor’s office, and I think they said there had been one meeting, but it was not public, and this was at the height of COVID-19, so I don’t think it ever went anywhere. 

Ward 13 Council Member Linea Palmisano was reported to say at the time that reform needed to be negotiated in the police labor contract. 

The new contract, however, says only that “full-time personnel may also work off-duty jobs, subject to the terms of the MPD Policy and Procedure Manual.”  The manual is controlled by the police leadership and clarifies that working independently using city resources is allowed.  

It also stipulates that “all MPD employees who pursue off-duty employment must apply for and receive approval, before the off-duty employment commences.” Officers working off-duty are also required to handle police calls that are brought to their attention while working off-duty, as they would if they were working on duty. This is one reason people support the current practices. 

In 2023, the police reported that rates and hours are negotiated directly between employee and the off-duty employer, and that the city “does not have a fiscal analysis of off-duty work as the hour and wage information is not received by the department from the off-duty employers or employees.”

When Brown contacted the city about hiring off-duty officers a few years ago, he was told to arrange that directly with an individual officer he knows.  

“Off-duty work for the MPD is decentralized to the precincts and the job of managing it has historically been handed down from one person to the next. It is considered a plum role because it puts enormous power into the hands of the person who has that role,” said Gross.  

Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center both use a decentralized approach where businesses and organizations contact officers directly, and officers independently handle scheduling, rates and payment. St. Paul, Duluth, Bloomington and Rochester use a centralized approach where the local businesses or agencies request off-duty officers through the local police departments and pay those cities for the work, with negotiation and scheduling done by the department. Edina is an example of a city that uses a partially centralized model where the department manages work for particular venues or events and coordinates scheduling facilitate payments, while other off-duty work may be managed by officers independently. 

Brown and Gross both prefer a more centralized approach. “In St. Paul, all off-duty assignments go through the police department, for obvious reasons,” said Brown. “Why are we the outlier here?”

“This police coverage should be arranged through the city, billed by the city and paid to the officers through city payroll," said Gross. “There would also be more fairness to the officers because off-duty work wouldn't just be assigned to the buddies of the person in charge of it.”

“I don’t believe we’ll ever reform the Minneapolis PD without reforming the off-duty rules,” said Brown.