Minneapolis City Council committee approves study to examine off-duty fees for police officers

MINNEAPOLIS – A Minneapolis City Council committee on Monday approved conducting a study that would examine how city resources are wasted when off-duty police officers work for private companies and consider imposing a fee for that work to offset some of the costs cover.

Council member Robin Wonsley argued that when an officer works overtime for a private company, Minneapolis residents pay for vehicle use, gas and uniform upkeep.

“City construction workers can’t drive city trucks after hours and fill potholes and get paid cash for it, but that’s exactly what we’re doing with MPD,” she said during a meeting Monday.

The Minneapolis Police Department’s overtime policy came under scrutiny in 2017 U.S. Department of Justice 2023 Reportwhich argued that the system “undermines oversight.” Patrol officers can control whether supervisors receive off-duty employment opportunities, preventing them from holding officers accountable.

While private security pays significantly more overtime pay than the department — at rates ranging from $150 to $175 an hour, sometimes in cash — the city gets “nothing,” while MPD allows officers to use its patrol cars and gas, they say it in the report.

Wonsley pointed out that the $19 per hour off-duty fee for use of a patrol car would be consistent with the city’s vehicle operating cost rate and is one of the costs the city could offset by adopting such fees. Other cities in Minnesota and across the country charge fees for off-duty work, according to a report presented to the City Council this summer.

Charging fees wouldn’t fix an “unregulated” and “dangerous off-duty system,” Wonsley said, but would be a good starting point to ensure that taxpayers don’t subsidize the Minneapolis police when they “only work off-duty.” . for personal gain.”

During the meeting, Councilwoman Linea Palmisano said she “doesn’t really care about the concept behind these points,” but argued they were just “nibbling around the edges.”

A court case from the 1990s requires the city to allow Minneapolis police to work off-duty, but Palmisano pushed to bring the entire off-duty system in-house, requiring another trip to court would require.

“We’ve been saying for years that we need to go back to off-duty work after COVID,” Palmisano said, citing a 2019 audit that examined police off-duty work. One of the issues outlined in the audit found that the use of marked patrol cars was not consistently approved or tracked by district leaders, as required by department policy.