By Zhaolan Wang

The Minneapolis Administration and Enterprise Oversight Council Committee Chambers, photo taken on Oct. 07, 2024.

Ward 2 Minneapolis City Councilperson Robin Wonsley, chair of the Administration and Enterprise Oversight committee, said she has been working for several years to find ways to rein in and regulate the Minneapolis Police Department’s off-duty work.

“There’s a lot of information out there that has shown, you know, everyone from small business owners to the U.S. Department of Justice has recognized the Minneapolis off-duty system is fundamentally broken and equitable,” Wonsley said at an Oct.7 committee meeting. “Due to a mid-1990s court case, Minneapolis must allow MPD to do off-duty work, but it is important that we figure out how to impose regulations or limit off-duty within the scope of what’s legal and What’s within our authority.”

A study of city resources consumed by police officers working off-duty for private businesses and imposing fees on those businesses to recover some of the costs, according to the brief of the city council. Experts at the University of Minnesota said police reform takes a long time to achieve effective results.

Minneapolis Police officers are allowed to work off-duty, but use city vehicles and materials and carry city liability insurance while doing so. Minneapolis’ off-duty system has been recognized as fundamentally inequitable by the US Department of Justice, according to the study.

Michelle Phelps, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota, and author of “The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America,” said her book explained in detail that the politics of transforming policing are complex, with the two visions of police as both a threat and potential form of protection thwarted transformation.

“I would say that in sociology as a field, there is a lot of debate about how to understand the true ‘role’ of the police,” Phelps said in an interview.

In 2019, the number of officers who worked one or more off-duty shifts increased to 71% of the entire force. Another 8% of officers said they worked more than a total of 64 hours in a week at least five times during the year, according to the 2019 police off duty work audit.

The Minneapolis police department public information officer declined to comment.

Officer Mohamed Noor shot Justine Ruszczyk in South Minneapolis in 2017. Don Damond, Ruszczyk’s fiance, said the Minneapolis Police Department hasn’t made any real progress toward change, according to the Minnesota Public Radio News.

According to the Minnesota Star Tribune, Noor had finished a seven hour private security shift just 90 minutes before starting his official police department shift that night. 

This case led Minneapolis police Chief Janee Harteau to resign.

The 2019 city audit identified four issues with off-duty officers working private security. Among the high-risk issues are technology enhancements needed to improve tracking, management and reporting.

These part-time jobs can pay up to several hundred dollars per hour and are usually paid in cash, according to the 2019 city audit.

Cash is an acceptable form of payment for off-duty work and is preferred by some secondary employers and officers, but cash payments also introduce additional problems, such as reputational and fraud risks. Off-duty work cash payments may be perceived by the community to avoid payroll taxes or income avoidance, according to the 2019 city audit.

The hourly rates for officers reach up to $175 per hour, none of which goes to the city, according to the MPR News.

Minneapolis police officers reached a settlement with the city in 1997 to allow off-duty work.

The settlement agreement requires that MPD officers who work off-duty are subject to the same policies and procedures as those who work on-duty. The city can’t restrict the amount of off-duty work officers do, and it doesn’t keep track of how much they work or how much they’re paid.

Ward 13 Councilmember Linea Palmisano said they wanted to discuss specifically the phenomenon of off-duty private security work by police officers using city-issued equipment, such as vehicles and uniforms. Palmisano said control should be strengthened for marked squad car usage related to off-duty work.

“Who would administer these kinds of costs?” asked Palmisano. “We will need to go back to the settlement agreement of 1997 and the original injunction from 1995, we’ve been saying for years that we need to get back to the off-duty work after covid in the pandemic shut down so much of our city.”

Members seek to look at MPD’s use of vehicles, uniforms and other resources during off-duty work. The council authorized the city attorney to draft which will allow the city to collect fees for off-duty use of city resources, according to the KSTP News.

Sources:

• Fee study for Police Department off-duty use of city
• KSTP News
• Linea Palmisano: Vice-Chair of the Administration & Enterprise Oversight Committee
• Minnesota Department of Human Rights v. City of Minneapolis settlement agreement
• Michelle Phelps
• MPR News
• Police Off-duty Work Audit – 2019
• Robin Wonsley: Chair of Administration & Enterprise Oversight Committee
• Record/Live of the Meeting, October 7, 2024

• The Minneapolis Reckoning: Race, Violence, and the Politics of Policing in America
• The Minnesota Public Radio News.
• The Star Tribune