08/16/03  Extra Jobs in Uniform - Police Visibility

While I agree with most of the points Citizen D made about the Dallas Police Department, I disagree with his criticism of Dallas police officers working extra jobs.   

Working extra jobs does not pull officers from answering the 911 calls from taxpaying citizens.  In reality, off duty officers working extra jobs help 911 calls get answered faster.   In addition, the private sector is picking up the bill to have additional officers on duty.  

Go to North Park mall.   There are Dallas officers in uniform walking around, keeping the peace.   They are not on-duty officers.  Those officers are being paid by North Park mall to handle incidents at the mall.  

If those officers were not there, on-duty officers would be summoned to deal with mall incidents, thus increasing the call volume and response times to 911 calls.    

Officers also prevent addition 911 calls for service by working at many other places and events around the city and just being VISIBLE -- all paid for by the private sector without tax dollars.  It is not uncommon for off-duty officers to leave their specific job to respond to priority calls nearby, again, being paid for by the private sector.  

On a typical Friday night, off- duty officers add hundreds of manpower hours to the city.  Not a bad trade for allowing the use of a uniform.  

Let's face it, the badge and gun are already paid for and would otherwise be sitting at home.  So, that point is moot.  

We pay for our own cleaning so that isn't an issue either.   Very few officers have squad cars at extra jobs.  On jobs that require a squad car, the business pays the city for the use of the car.  Officers on Expanded Neighborhood Patrol answer 911 calls in their designated area as well as write revenue generating citations, all at NO tax payer cost.  

Those call responding ENP off-duty officers answer your tax payer 911 calls at NO tax payer expense.

Some critics want to charge "rent" for the officers uniforms and equipment at a rate of a couple of bucks an hour or a flat fee per job.  Others, we have heard, want the city to coordinate all the extra jobs, paying the officers $30 an hour and charging the business $45 an hour.  Not a good idea.   

Those business owners wanting police officers will just hire officers from other jurisdictions (some already do) or security guards.  When out-of-town officers or security guards make arrests or detentions, on-duty officers will have to go handle the arrest and required reports, tying up on-duty officers for hours at a time.  

As it is now, if an off-duty Dallas officer makes an arrest, he is required to complete the arrest report and have it approved prior to calling an on-duty element.   The on-duty element arrives, drops  the prisoner at  jail and is then free to answer other calls.  

The time savings comes from the reports being completed prior to the on duty officers being called.  Arrest reports can take hours to complete.  With off-duty officers, these hours are paid for by the private sector saving your tax dollars and decreasing the response time to the tax payers 911 calls by
freeing up on-duty officers.  

Let's drop the criticism of the extra job work on paying our officers a competitive wage so they do not need to work all the extra hours to make ends meet.   

Another Dallas Cop