Homework Responses Wk 4

Hello Class and Professor!

     Regardless of the occupation, moonlighting is considered to be a secondary job and performed after regular duty hours from your primary job.  A previous research revealed that 20% of law enforcement officials take up on moonlighting as income supplement to their current salaries (Nemeth, 2011).  It has also been revealed that 81% of police departments encourage moonlighting and 19% restrict their personnel from doing so (Nemeth, 2011).  An assumption for each empirical case could indicate the following: department’s that encourage it view it as gaining additional experience for occupational enhancement and those who restrict it may be due to a lack of established policies or trending liability issues in the past. 

     Personally, moonlighting should be viewed as having many benefits for the individual and the precinct, but standards must be enforced to prevent any issues concerning liabilities since they can become costly or life threatening.  Some benefits of moonlighting include: rank advancement, broadening their scope of experience, and added income to reduce any personal stress from monetary burdens.  The major downfall is it can become a burden on the individual when fatigue from being overworked begins to affect their performance as an officer.  This is one of the reasons why it must be relayed to their chain of command so there is a mutual understanding of the consequences if it negatively impacts their career, especially if officers are never officially off duty. 

     A recent article explains that officers are never officially off duty because they have a tendency to quickly respond to distressing situations, while off-duty, as if they were on-duty because of the unique skills and experience they have attained from their role as an officer (Banganz, 2007).  While off-duty, they must carefully evaluate the situation before taking action because common unfortunate incidents occur such as being mistaken for an offender that may lead into being killed by an on-duty officer or being involved in a customary risk of being sued for his actions (civil or federal) under 42 USC 1983 (Banganz, 2007).  Additionally, each individual acting on their own to provide assistance in a situation must remember that just because they are off-duty does not mean that they are blanketed by color of law; this is determined by numerous questions regarding their jurisdiction under the 42 USC 1983 (Banganz, 2007).                   

     Based off of Burton’s (2007) observation, the leadership within the precinct should limit hours worked with rest time in between; this action alone alleviates problems that may come with fatigue.  They should also specify specific establishments where they are forbidden to be employed such as affiliated pornographic businesses or serving alcohol to potentially lead to a conflict of interest; some of these establishments include strip clubs, bars, clubs, and any others similar to this (Burton, 2007).  Finally, uniform wear is at the discretion of the precinct Chief so as not to blur the lines of their jurisdiction and should be specific to certain off-duty employment that would identify them as official police officers; some examples include involvement of public events to engage in traffic/crowd control, security, or law enforcement duties; again, this would identify them as police officers in the case they responded to an emergency so they are not mistaken as an offender (Burton, 2007).   

References

Baganz, M. (2007, April 01). Off-Duty Confrontations: Legal Issues. Retrieved October 02, 2020, from https://www.police1.com/legal/articles/off-duty-confrontations-legal-issues-5mx9jd9sib4IUDDz/

Burton, D. (2007, January). Outside employment guidelines for law enforcement agencies. FBI Law Enforcement Bulleting. Retrieved from http://www.aele.org/law/2007FPDEC/fbileb9701.pdf

Nemeth, C. (2011). Private security and the law (4th ed.). Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/apus/reader.action?docID=816162