Saturday, May 27, 2006

Police Off-Duty Work

My take on this, as previously discussed on Solo and the Colonel's blog.

First a little bit of my knowledge of the Mississippi Valley Fair incident. People who were involved are welcome to correct my facts. The way I have heard the story told, Cpl. Welke saw Mr. Williams getting ready to hit someone, and took him to the ground. The QCTimes published copies of the police reports here. Unfortunately for Mr. Williams, Al Welke is a big guy, and Williams apparently has weak hips. He ended up with a broken hip, and then of course sued the fair, Welke, the DPD, etc. Strangely enough, he won the case, and that's the cause of all this hoopla. The situation was not helped by the fact that the DPD assumed the MVF would be liable, and the MVF assumed the DPD would be. Based on this alone, I can see why Chief Bladel would not want to continue the DPD's relationship with the fair.

Regarding off-duty work in general, I divided my opinions into Pros and Cons of allowing this practice.

Pro: While officers are working off-duty, they are essentially acting as a police officer, only being paid by a private business. This theoretically could take some of the strain off of on-duty officers, as they would have to respond less frequently to locations where an off-duty cop is stationed. Its like having a beat that consists of HyVee, only without the city paying the cop to patrol it.
Pro: Allowing off-duty work serves as a further benefit of the job, hopefully allowing the DPD to attract better qualified officers without actually increasing pay or benefits. Last I heard, most off-duty jobs pay $25 per hour and above.
Con: Liability. If the officer gets involved in an incident while in uniform and acting as a Davenport Police Officer, the city may be liable. (i.e, the Fair) I'm no lawyer, so here I'm just going by news articles.
Con: Officers may take on too much off-duty work (sometimes almost as much as on-duty) causing fatigue or decreased job performance in their actual police job. This could probably be decreased by closer monitoring of off-duty work.

Overall, I'm undecided at this point. Taking away all off-duty work would be similar to a pay cut for most officers, and some locations, such as the water company, require an officer for homeland security. On the other hand, the liability issue could cost the city big bucks if something worse than a broken hip ever happens.

What do you hardy souls who read through this whole post think about the issue?

7 comments:

Snarky Chick said...

Seems simple. They should only be allowed to work for companies which have signed agreements with the city to assume all liability for the officer's actions while working for them.

Anonymous said...

The real value of off-duty officers, paid or not, was shown this past week.

The fair should have stood-up for at least fifty percent liability in the Williams case, regardless of the decision. Hopefully their liability insurance rates for the event will go up for the lack of backbone.

Anonymous said...

The fair needs to step up and do something about this. Who is going to provide security at the fair? It is probably the largest consolidated collection of drunk s**tsacks in the list of annual QC events. If they canot provide adequate security they should not have the fair. In my opinion, the Davenport Police are needed for this to occur.

Anonymous said...

"largest consolidated collection of drunk s**tsacks in the list of annual QC events"

Surely you overlooked sturgis on the river...?

cruiser said...

Why couldn't the police get their own liability insurance to work off duty. Worst case they could charge a little more to offset the extra expense, have their own coverage, free up the city from lawsuits, and give everyone peace of mind.

Anonymous said...

Who did you get your info on the incident at the fairgounds from, QCI.

QuadCityImages said...

Why does it matter? I generally don't use names on here unless the person is either a public figure or gave me permission. Besides, most of what I said matches with the police reports published by the QCTimes.