At the time, Willis was starring alongside Cybill Shepherd in the comedy TV show Moonlighting. In its most basic terms, moonlighting is a secondary job worked in addition to one’s main, primary job. You’ve thought about this for longer, so maybe you can tell me: What is it that feels intuitively wrong about this? The higher-income neighborhoods that have a higher tax bracket pay more, but most of the policing happens in the lower-income neighborhoods. The court discussed the limited investment by the workers, noting that ODPS periodically supplied them with basic equipment necessary for the job, including signage, reflective jackets, and badge-shaped patches with the ODPS logo.  While the workers had to purchase or lease a police uniform and supply their own vehicle, the cost of those items “pale[d] in comparison to the amount ODPS spent running its business per year.”  The court determined that the facts supported employee status. Two crossed lines that form an 'X'. In short, moonlighting occurs whenever you take on a second job. Is it your sense that most people who are doing this kind of work on the side are doing it at the expense of sleeping or their weekends? There are some stories cited in my paper of officers working in New Orleans and making six figures just on their private off-duty employment—more than doubling their public salary. A good, legally compliant moonlighting policy should do the following: 1. For example, if a private employer has a dress code that has racial implications—like, no gold chains, no hats turned backwards, no baggy shorts, no basketball jerseys. If you’re among the 30% of physicians/doctors currently moonlighting, or plan to do so, don’t miss these guidelines and tips. I think it’s a good sample—the agencies that responded employ just under 20 percent of the entire state and local police force in the country—but I don’t want to extrapolate from it too much. Teachers, firefighters and police officers who are eligible for pensions and Social Security may receive reduced retirement benefits. When cops moonlighting as private security guards screw up, Chicago taxpayers pay for the lawsuits. The word "Insider". We also represent individuals in transactions and other matters. So even though the employment contract is only between the private employer and the officer, in order to approve the off-duty employment, the agency wants to be indemnified so if the officer does get sued, the private employer will pick up the tab. Yeah. And I think on FAMU homecoming I was making 75 or 95 dollars an hour. When cops moonlighting as private security guards screw up, Chicago taxpayers pay for the lawsuits. This second job can vary significantly based on your professional nature and any relevant certifications you may have. Archived. And one of the takeaways from this paper is how few agencies actually track the number of officers who work for private employers and the number of hours that officers spend working for private employers. Photo illustation by Slate. The term relates to any kind of employment, not just medical employment. There are officers who work a day shift and get off at, say, 5 p.m., then they go home for a little while and then go work five or six hours at their off-duty jobs in the evenings. Yeah, absolutely. If you plan to implement a moonlighting policy for your practice, keep in mind that your policies themselves can’t prevent employees from working at another business. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, U.S. Department of Labor – Wage and Hour Division, U.S. Department of Labor – Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, U.S. Department of Labor – Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Department of Labor – Office of Disability Employment Policy, U.S. All rights reserved. If you value our work, please disable your ad blocker. That’s generally the emphasis—security. In 2013, the actor explained how everything changed: “Thank God Cybill Shepherd got pregnant. Following a bench trial, the district court concluded that the off-duty officers were independent contractors vis-a-vis ODPS because they “simply were not economically dependent on ODPS and instead used ODPS to supplement their incomes.”  The district court also held that other of ODPS’s security workers—those who were not off-duty police officers—were employees of ODPS.  Both parties appealed. I think that’s why most officers do it. It can mean keeping employees who would otherwise leave, especially if they’re moonlighting to make enough money to make ends meet. Maybe if Jane didn't wear such slutty clothing, people wouldn't believe that she was moonlighting as a stripper. Learn more. We don’t have good local or national data on how many officers are engaged in off-duty employment or how many hours they’re working. A recent survey of policing in America shows hundreds of thousands of officers put in millions of hours every year moonlighting. The defendant, Off Duty Police Services (ODPS), contracts with businesses in and around Louisville, Kentucky, to offer private security and traffic control services. Breaking that down by hours, my public salary was just under $22 an hour, plus benefits and all that other stuff. A private employer hires an off-duty officer because of their public authority, not just because of their personal characteristics or their qualifications. Is it common for an officer’s off-duty income to be a significant chunk of what he or she is bringing home? The Sixth Circuit applied a six-factor “economic reality” test to determine whether ODPS’s workers qualified as employees under the FLSA, noting that the ultimate question is whether a worker is economically dependent on an alleged employer. Look it up now! Moonlighting Police Officers Are Employees, Not Independent Contractors, Says Sixth Circuit, U.S. Businesses that are not engaging in rigorous self-examination of their relationships with independent contractors are missing a potential opportunity to reduce their legal—and therefore financial—risk. Seattle mayor clamps down on lucrative police moonlighting. For many people, moonlighting may take the form of a seasonal job at a retail chain. It also provides the apartment complex management and other residents with a police contact, so instead of calling the police department to complain about a noise problem, residents might be given the courtesy officer’s phone number and encouraged to call him or her instead. In addition to New York, we have offices in Beijing, Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Paris, São Paulo and Washington, D.C., as well as Boca Raton, Newark and New Orleans. For me, I would get off work at 2 o’clock in the morning on Friday or Saturday nights and then I’d go work for two hours at the nightclub as it was closing down. Of all the agencies that responded—I had 162 agencies respond to the survey—130 of them allow off-duty employment. By subscribing to our blog, you acknowledge that you have read our. The neighborhoods that pay for most of the policing in a given city are not the neighborhoods that are on the receiving end of most police services. And sometimes I could get paid much more than that. The sense that I get from the research is that it’s pretty common. It might require the officer to park their police car in a visible spot near the front of the complex, just to provide that sense of police presence. It can be extremely lucrative. Not to get too theoretical, but if you believe that “law” is what happens on the ground, then yes—the private employer’s rules become de facto law. Police at some agencies, particularly smaller, rural departments, might start their careers with a salary of $30,000 or less; officers in agencies like that might turn to off-duty work as a necessary way to pay the bills. Liability is a huge issue. This might include responding to noise complaints in the apartment complex. And how common is this? There was a particularly large event every year in Tallahassee, [Florida A&M University]’s homecoming. "This year has carried with it … You can cancel anytime. For Stoughton, who teaches at the University of South Carolina School of Law, this is a consequential oversight—particularly because, as he learned when he was a police officer in Tallahassee, Florida, and did moonlighting work for nightclubs and other private entities, officers who take these kinds of gigs typically wear their official police uniforms, further blurring the public’s understanding of whether they are on duty or off and whether that matters. Some oft-cited reasons for moonlighting include: ODPS provides some of these services by engaging sworn, off-duty police officers who—when they’re not working for ODPS—are employed full time or otherwise by a law enforcement agency.  ODPS classified the workers as independent contractors, and did not pay them overtime wages or keep the pay and hours records required by FLSA regulations.  The U.S. Department of Labor sued ODPS.  And while the ability to control one’s schedule may, in some circumstances, allow more efficient workers to maximize profits, ODPS’s workers had no such opportunity. But a new paper by law professor Seth Stoughton, posted online this week in draft form, makes the argument that we’ve been ignoring an important aspect of policing—namely, the massive amount of moonlighting that cops do for private companies when they’re off duty. I tend to agree. Images by Romaniaboy/Thinkstock, moodboard/Thinkstock, and Jupiterimages/Thinkstock. Holding another job at night, often one of a sketchy nature.  An income-based rule would deny that economic reality. Policing is typically thought of as inherently redistributive. by Victoria February 14, 2005 Police officers often work secondary employment as armed security guards in their police uniforms. What were your reasons for doing it? This is in exchange for reduced rent? It involves … A moonlighting network Nationally, as many as 40 percent of officers moonlight in some capacity, a recent survey of 162 law enforcement agencies suggests. If there’s a large public event, they might have an officer just standing by in case there are any problems. Because five of the six economic reality factors supported finding an employment relationship between ODPS and the workers, the Court of Appeals concluded that the workers were employees entitled to overtime wages, especially when viewing the factors in light of the FLSA’s “strikingly broad” definition of “employee” and the statute’s “remedial and humanitarian purpose.”, The legal justifications for independent contractor relationships are being scrutinized in courts and governmental agencies throughout the U.S.  As a result, businesses that have relied historically on services provided by independent professionals, contractors, and consultants are increasingly under attack.  The Sixth Circuit put it bluntly:  “The way we work in America is changing. moonlight (v.) "hold a second job, especially at night," 1957 (implied in the verbal noun moonlighting), from moonlighter "one who takes a second job after hours" (1954), from the notion of working by the light of the moon; see moonlight (n.). Fundamentally it doesn’t line up with our intuitive conception of what policing is. But the idea that they’d be in uniform is shocking to me. Obama is right about 'defund the police.' Well, that’s exactly what happens. 29. Can you tell from your research how widespread the practice is? Officers are absolutely using off-duty employment to make extra money, but it’s also true that officers are, in many places, pathetically underpaid. It was under-21 night, meaning no alcohol, but that didn't mean police weren't needed. Most plaintiffs are probably going to sue both, because there can be ambiguity. They’re in uniform, they have a badge, they have a gun belt. Of course, many would think that the chance to let hardworking, underpaid cops make more money by moonlighting for private business is no … Does that mean that off-duty officers doing freelance work are allowed to do all the same stuff they can do when they’re on duty, like arrest people and search them and use force on them? One scholar, a historian, published a paper about English police services in the 1830s, and it described the officer’s salary as a “retaining fee.” It wasn’t really where the officers made their money—where they made their money was someone would call in a burglary and say, “my stuff has been stolen” and the officer would say, “well, how much are you offering to recover it?” And then the officer would collect that reward. Handling Moonlighting Employees. There’s a tremendous amount of variation and very little consistency here. If you develop a moonlighting policy, use it when you counsel employees about whatever problems you perceive the other job causes for your business. The order follows revelations that the FBI is investigating SPD officers for their after-hours work. In most places, are police officers taking this work to line their pockets, or are there places where the public pay is so low that this is really the only way to earn a decent living? And the key question is whether you conceive of the off-duty officer as being a police officer who works for a public agency or whether you conceive of them as working for the private company. moonlight Moonlight is literally the light we can see shining from the moon, but to moonlight is to work a second job. Physician moonlighting has become a great option for not only medical residents, but also mid-career and senior physicians. "Defund police" is a recurring theme in protests sweeping the nation, sparking a reckoning on racism and social justice. Stoughton sent survey questions to about 400 police agencies at the state, county, and city levels, asking them about their policies regarding off-duty work and the amount of time their officers spend doing it. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. These dress codes exist at nightclubs and other places in this country. You did some of this work when you were a police officer in Tallahassee. It’s counterintuitive and incongruous to think of a public police officer who is being paid by, and working on behalf of, a private employer. And I had no idea that, as you report in the paper, some agencies require officers to wear their uniforms while working off-duty for private employers. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. The debate over law enforcement that’s been raging in America for the past two years has naturally focused on the decisions police officers make when they’re working—not what they do after they punch out for the day. The court also noted that the workers received an hourly wage from set unilaterally by ODPS, regardless of the skill they exercised, and determined that the facts supported employee status. Join Slate Plus to continue reading, and you’ll get unlimited access to all our work—and support Slate’s independent journalism. They’re in uniform, they have a badge, they have a gun belt. Follow Proskauer’s wage and hour blog to stay current on the latest developments. Moonlighting definition at Dictionary.com, a free online dictionary with pronunciation, synonyms and translation. Moonlighting Success Principle #1: Make the Most of Your Spare Time (You’ve Got More of It Than You Think) When you work a day (or night) job it can seem like you have little time of your own. In yet another legal development calling into question a traditional independent contractor relationship in the U.S., the Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit determined that off-duty police officers were employees of a private security company for purposes of the Fair Labor Standards Act.  In Acosta v. Off Duty Police Services, Inc. (6th Cir. There’s also something called a “courtesy officer,” which is a police officer who lives at an apartment complex or condo building and provides some security or law enforcement services in exchange for reduced rent. The court noted that while ODPS’s workers accepted jobs intermittently, they often worked for ODPS for years—or, in some cases, decades—at a time, a fact supporting employee status. From your paper it also sounds like there aren’t rules or even conventions for who is held responsible when an off-duty police officer working a private gig does something to get sued. But assuming you work for 8 hours, and sleep for 8 hours, that still leaves you with 8 hours each weekday to do whatever you’d like with. Posted by 2 years ago. Most departments allow off-duty employment. I think that, and developing more information about how agencies are handling off duty employment, is the next step. It’s not because they’re better trained and better equipped than someone else.  The factors considered are:  (1) the permanency of the relationship between the parties, (2) the degree of skill required for the rendering of the services, (3) the worker’s investment in equipment or materials for the task, (4) the worker’s opportunity for profit or loss, depending upon his or her skill, (5) the degree of the alleged employer’s right to control the manner in which the work is performed, and (6) whether the service rendered is an integral part of the alleged employer’s business. Woof. Our clients include many of the world’s top companies, financial institutions, investment funds, not-for-profit institutions, governmental entities and other organizations across industries and borders. Learn more. Do you have a sense of what percentage of officers actually do it, and how much time they’re spending on it relative to their normal jobs? Many police officers moonlight in their off-duty hours, and this little-discussed practice raises a number of thorny issues.  ODPS’s assignments required workers to be present for set periods of time, regardless  of  what  skills  they  exercised,  so  workers  could  not  complete  jobs  more  or less efficiently than their counterparts. And 62 of those, almost 50 percent, do not track the number of officers who do it. Some of that might be bouncing at a nightclub, but some of it might just be standing by at a party. Instead, you can set expectations as to what employees need to do if they want to remain employed with you. There’s some tension here and some unanswered questions. I knew officers sometimes took off-duty gigs, working as bouncers or security guards. When I left the police department, I was making right around $45,000 a year. That could mean as many as 300,000 officers working secondary jobs in a given year, putting in up to 43 million hours of work for private employers. Moonlighting and police officers go hand in hand and have for decades. Both. It's almost tradition among the men and women in blue to toil after hours. If these guys are working for a private employer, and they’re being paid to enforce the private employer’s rules by using their authority as law enforcement agents, aren’t they kind of turning those rules into … pseudo-laws? As a matter of policy some departments have private employers sign indemnity agreements with the agency before the officer is allowed to work with them. The court rejected ODPS’s argument that because workers could accept or reject work, they effectively controlled their opportunities for profit or loss by maintaining ultimate control over their workload.  The more relevant inquiry, in the court’s view, is whether workers can increase profits through “managerial skill” (e.g., by improving efficiency to complete more jobs per day): It requires little skill to determine whether one is available at a certain day and time or whether inclement weather or some other factor might make a job less desirable. It seems unfair that someone can just rent out that kind of authority. But in some ways, it’s the same idea of officers trading on their public authority. 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I’m imagining my landlord giving a police officer moving into my building a discount in exchange for parking his cruiser out front like a scarecrow. It indicates a way to close an interaction, or dismiss a notification. Lots of people, something like 60 or 80,000 people come into Tallahassee for that, and officers’ days off all get canceled and you work a lot of overtime for the city. It may be the case that [the allure of] off-duty employment attracts higher-quality officers than the police could otherwise hire. As to the degree of control exercised by ODPS, the court was less concerned with the control the company exercised than the control it retained the right to exercise.  The court noted that the workers were subject to ODPS policies and procedures, non-compliance with which could result in discipline (a “time out,” or period of no work) or complete termination of the relationship.  The court also noted that ODPS set the rate at which the workers were paid; told the workers where to go for the job, when to arrive, and whom they should contact when they got there; periodically checked in on the workers at the work site; and imposed dress and grooming standards.  ODPS argued that it did not supervise the day-to-day performance of the workers, but the court countered that “such close supervision is not necessary to establish control.” The court found the facts not to break cleanly in favor of employee or independent contractor status. It’s just not what they do, right? Where do they find the time to have a whole separate income stream? What is “Moonlighting”? Right. Cases evaluating whether moonlighting police officers are employees at their second jobs often stumble on the “permanency” factor and the semantics of the “economic dependence” issue. Close. It just strikes me as crazy, though I’m not sure I can totally explain why. Here are 11 of their most interesting cop lingo terms and what they mean. Defining Moonlighting Among Police Officers Moonlighting, in the most common usage of the term, refers to a situation in which an individual holds two or more jobs where one of those jobs is considered to be a person's primary employment (Leonard & More, 1992, p. 592). v. To work at another job, often at night, in addition to one's full-time job. This piece did not identify and did not try to identify best practices. I originally had a part of this paper that tracked the history of what I call the blurred blue line—the difficulty of distinguishing private and public policing. And they found roughly the same 80 percent number. It might require them to take reports of crimes that occur in the apartment complex when they’re available to do so, so instead of sending an on-duty officer to deal with a noise complaint or a vehicle burglary report, the off-duty courtesy officer is called and sent instead. For residents, moonlighting may mean working as an independent physician, outside of the scope of your residency training program. Moonlighting can also be a way for employees to gain new skills, which can be applied at their full-time job. So when you have private businesses, neighborhoods, even potentially private individuals hiring police, it cuts against that general approach of police as a public good that serves all of the citizenry without regard for anyone’s ability to pay. Police officers have unofficial jargon they seem to use across the board. Feb. 12, 2019), the circuit court found that the officers satisfied five of the six factors in the “economic reality” test used to determine employee status. Here are 11 of their most interesting cop lingo terms and what they mean. And what happens when the officer does enforce those dress codes and gets sued for discrimination? That’s totally foreign to our modern conception of policing. By joining Slate Plus you support our work and get exclusive content. When I did work for a private employer I don’t think I ever made less than $30 an hour. Moonlighting policy. They may have a marked police vehicle with them. Like, could a bunch of wealthy people who live in a neighborhood pool their money and hire a cop to patrol their streets? How much were you making when you were doing it? And you'll never see this message again. Crime & Justice Moonlighting police leave body cameras behind Police officers gather outside AT&T Park before the San Francisco Giants' baseball … As an employer, you have very little ability to dictate what your employees can and cannot do during their off hours. On the degree of skill required, the court credited the officers’ trial testimony that the tasks they performed required little skill, initiative, or training.  The court was less persuaded by ODPS’s argument regarding the high degree of skill and training required to become a licensed police officer, noting that this factor does not concern the skills possessed by the workers, but rather the degree of skill required for the rendering of the services.  That ODPS engaged non-sworn officers further supported the conclusion that the work did not require the high degree of skill that sworn police work can require.  The court determined that the facts favor employee status. With 725+ lawyers active in virtually every major market worldwide, we are recognized not only for our legal excellence, but also our dedication to client service. Reform involves going beyond loud proclamations. What I can give you is the data from my survey. In fact, part of the reason why private employers hire them is that they’re perceived as more official than private security guards. Other states tend to suggest the opposite approach—they say the private employer is not liable. My survey wasn’t that specific, but my sense is most of it is security work. So while the information that I have is a good start toward understanding how big this phenomenon might be, the takeaway is we actually don’t know. You’ve run out of free articles. moonlighting definition: 1. the act of working at an extra job, especially without telling your main employer: 2. the act…. But it could also be the case that off-duty employment decreases officer wages because the agency doesn’t need to pay officers as much to attract the level of applicants it wants. freelancing). The police officer who’s working off-duty for a private employer represents the state. What kind of work are most of these officers doing when they’re hired by private companies? To assess the permanency of the relationship, the court examined both its length and its regularity, noting that independent contractors “often have fixed employment periods and transfer from place to place as particular work is offered to them, whereas employees usually work for only one employer and such relationship is continuous and indefinite in duration.”  By contrast, the court observed, that a party works for more than one company is only “one factor of many to consider in determining whether a worker is economically dependent” upon one of those companies: [W]hether a worker has more than one source of income says little about that worker’s employment status.  Many workers in the modern economy, including employees and independent contractors alike, must routinely seek out more than one source of income to make ends meet. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Department of Labor – Veterans’ Employment and Training Services, Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Government Contractor Compliance & Regulatory Update, Proskauer on Class and Collective Actions, Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation. So you’d get released from your public job and you would go to your private job. The only time you really need to get involved with an employee's moonlighting habits is when they affect your business and the employee's performance of his or her job. Can the nightclub have the officer enforce those dress codes? A terrible slogan makes it hard to win change. It seems like police resources shouldn’t be allocated based on who can afford to pay for them. This moonlighting policy template (or outside employment policy) is ready to be tailored to your company’s needs and can be a starting point for setting up your employment policies. And then after your overtime for the city, if you have a gig like I did, you’d go to the nightclub afterwards. And that happens not just at nightclubs and parties, it happens at pharmacies, grocery stores, department stores, big box stores, at strip malls. At the outset, the Court of Appeals noted that ODPS “built its business around the security and traffic control services provided by its workers,” and therefore “[t]here is no doubt that the services offered by ODPS’s workers are integral to the company.”  The court rejected ODPS’s argument that it is merely “an agent between its customers and independent … officers.”. Work secondary employment as armed security guards would n't believe that she was moonlighting as a.... The term relates to any kind of employment, not just because of most! Working as bouncers or security guards there’s a tremendous amount of variation and very little ability to dictate your. 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Under-21 night, in addition to one 's full-time job moonlighting include: moonlighting policy should do the following 1. That you have very little ability to dictate what your employees can and not... York City or how many officers are engaged in off-duty employment attracts higher-quality officers than police... Physician moonlighting has become a great option for not only medical residents, moonlighting may take the form of seasonal! Hours that officers work for private employers your overtime for the lawsuits, it’s the same 80 percent.... Made less than $ 30 an hour, Plus benefits and all that other stuff in off-duty attracts. $ 22 an hour gets sued for discrimination states tend to suggest the opposite approach—they say private.