In the town I work we have two big supermarkets. One hires off duty cops to be there a few hours at night on the weekends. It used to be more days but they cut down. The other store has no uniformed security but they do have loss prevention workers.
In the town I live we have the same two companies with stores. Neither has cops or uniformed security at all.
Hm, I haven’t noticed a lot of armed security in DC grocery stores, but I do see quite a few uniformed police who seem to be on duty.
I made a dumb remark for the fun of it earlier, but I should say that I see nothing inherently bad about security at places that involves lots of people, including a high proportion of women and children, and lots of cash (or as I was brought up to say, “cash money.” How that security behaves is another matter, and of course impacts on whether it should be armed, but it doesn’t invalidate the concept. If your area has large flea markets, there’s probably security there too.
At the Columbia Heights Giant, they hire MPD as security. My friend witnessed an assault in progress and ran in to the store to tell the cop there and he said to call 911 as he was working security and off duty.
Our store’s security guards aren’t “armed” with anything other than handcuffs. Most of them, however, are ex-military or police and some of them are amateur MMA fighters, so they don’t really need a weapon to take down a shoplifter.
When we are hired on our off duty time we are in full uniform and have all police powers. It is just that the business is paying us for are time at that moment.
Interesting, I had no idea that police could wear uniforms off duty. Ignorance fought!
That is very location specific. In my department all “extra duty” jobs, both security and traffic, have to go through our administration. The requests are made to the clerk that handles it and there is a system in place to assign jobs. When we get paid for the jobs it comes in our regular paycheck. The companies send their money to the department. The department gets a significant cut by adding in [del]taxes[/del] administrative fees and car usage fees.
What madmonk28 described would be a good way for me to get fired or disciplined. Even though we are working for an outside company at the moment it is not an excuse to shirk your duty. There would be times where the safety of the work zone would keep us from being able to leave but that is a different issue.
In my department we are allowed outside employment but it can not be in law enforcement or security. So no private investigating, bouncer, body guard etc. Any police type job has to be through the department.
ETA I have to make this distinction even though it only means something to me. When I said “the department gets a significant cut” I misspoke. Town Hall gets that money. It is a big bone of contention that they make a ton of money off of our work and none of it seems to come back over to us in salary, equipment or anything.
If they did specify which $$ were going to the poilice, I’m sure it would be a lot like lottery money going to education - that doesn’t result in more dollars for education, they just reduce the money coming from the general fund.
So, at some level, what ever percentage of the extra dollars you bring in is as a portion of the total county(?) budget, that portion flows to your department.
Are you at least paid an OT rate, or is this legally considered an outside job, thus resetting your hours clock?
I’m assuming you also have some type of union overtime equalization thing going on. Does refusing “extra duty” tie into that at all?
There is a limit to how many hours per day we work. There is a limit to how many hours we can bid for in a week in an attempt to equalize the advantages in some schedules. It is completely voluntary so there is no refusing. If you want to work you put in for the job. If you don’t want to you don’t. Our extra duty rate is set by town ordinance. It is not part of the contract. The rate is lower than my OT rate as someone who is at top pay but much higher than the OT rate of newer guys.