The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously Thursday in favor of a measure that would have the city collect fees for off-duty police work as early as 2026, though the actual implementation will likely take at least another year.
Off-duty work includes the side gigs officers can take with businesses and bars outside their working hours, but in uniform and oftentimes while using MPD squad cars. The controversial system has previously been called out by the Department of Justice for undermining officer supervision, with hourly rates for officers reaching up to $175 per hour — none of which goes to the city.
The move puts more pressure on city administration who said they are on board with collecting fees but would not be able to next year. That’s due to a lack of infrastructure for collection, including a new IT platform that won’t kick off until 2027, according to the office of community safety.
“Everything that we do in government is about prioritizing, and certain things start getting pushed to the back burner once you have a certain set of judgement calls. This is an input into how we ought to be prioritizing this work,” said council president Elliott Payne. “[Off-duty work] has been a practice that has had a lot of abuse over many, many years, and this is just the smallest thing we can do to start bringing more transparency and accountability to the off-duty program.”
Under the new fee schedule, the city would recoup $6.99 per hour when officers use city-owned resources, without a vehicle, for off-duty work. When officers work off-duty using an MPD vehicle, the city would recoup $27.58 hourly. Those numbers were based on a fee study the council had the office of community safety and MPD present on earlier this year.
Office of community safety commissioner Jared Jeffries said in a statement that the department has “continuously voiced our support for off-duty fee collection,” but that he had informed the council earlier this year that the city would not be able to move forward at this time.
”The fee amounts need more review and we do not yet have the technology to successfully implement the charging and collection of fees,” he said. “We are actively working to gather more information and update the technology.”
Council member Robin Wonsley, who was one of the authors, said the measure was the culmination of years working to boost oversight. She said the new fee schedule will give the administration “both the resources and ideally the political motivation” to make the fees happen. She’s repeatedly accused the mayor’s administration of dragging their feet and said this work could have been done sooner.
Wonsley said the change will help make sure officers aren’t being dangerously overworked and that “taxpayers no longer have to subsidize private side gigs for only one city workforce.”
She said the city could save about $1.4 million annually if they collected fees on off-duty work.
A spokesperson for Mayor Jacob Frey said Frey supports the fees and has been “actively working on it,” but the pace of implementation is because of logistics and “not for a lack of interest in the topic or a will to explore it.”
Even before the DOJ investigation came out in 2023, off-duty work has been a controversial practice — coming in and out of the headlines during high profile incidents. In 2017, then-MPD officer Mohamed Noor shot and killed Justine Ruszczyk after starting a 10-hour police shift following seven hours at a security gig, with little time between. Former MPD officer Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd in 2020, was also charged with multiple felony counts of tax evasion, including more than $95,00 for his off-duty gigs.
The Minneapolis Police Department has put in some changes in recent years to regulate off-duty work. A cap on the number of hours MPD officers can work includes hours worked during off-duty gigs, which are required to be logged into a computer timekeeping database, along with details about where they worked.
Under MPD policy, officers who want to work off-duty are required to get approval from their immediate supervisor as well as their precinct commander.
An updated policy related to hours worked is currently open for community feedback.
Several council members are working on other initiatives to boost transparency around off-duty police work, which could be presented in the council chambers in the months to come.
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