The Minneapolis City Council unanimously passed an ordinance Thursday that will allow the city to recoup funds when off-duty police officers work security for local businesses or events.
The ordinance will let the city charge a fee for off-duty work, but the city hasn’t determined yet whether officers or the people who hire them will foot that bill.
The ordinance, co-authored by Council Members Robin Wonsley and Elliott Payne, passed in a 12-0 vote. Council Member Andrea Jenkins was present while the council discussed the ordinance; she was absent during the vote for reasons that were not immediately clear.
Wonsley said there is no standard rate officers charge businesses and others for providing security while off duty. She said issues have been identified with the practice for years, and a fee collected by the city will allow for more oversight and tracking.
“This inaction has had a high cost to residents,” she said of how off-duty work is managed. “Small business owners have also spoken publicly about the financial exploitation and discrimination they have experienced as a result of an unregulated off-duty system that we’ve had at the city.”
She said that the city could have recouped up to $1.4 million in 2024 if it had charged fees for off-duty work.
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara was not present at the meeting, but a spokesperson for the department said in a statement that O’Hara “supports the City of Minneapolis having the ability to recover costs for the wear and tear on city property resulting from non-city contractual work performed by city employees.”
Several council members asked Thursday about the fee rates and who will pay them — the police officers themselves or the businesses that hire them for off-duty security. Amy Schutt, assistant city attorney, told council members that the city needs to first pass the ordinance before making those decisions.
The fees are currently planned to take effect in the beginning of 2026, Schutt said.
Some council members said the outside entities who hire off-duty officers should have to pay the fee, not the officers.
“I don’t think I would agree that the fee should be charged to officers, just to put it out there,” said Council Member Jamal Osman.
Council Member Michael Rainville said the fees should not be too high for businesses that want to hire officers for security at events.
“Let’s keep our open mind and come up with something that does not raise our public safety costs to such extreme … that people are not able to afford to have their events,” he said
The Minneapolis Police Department is conducting a study to decide how much to charge in fees. The findings will be presented to the council in May.
The department’s off-duty work policy is also addressed in the federal consent decree the council approved earlier this month based on a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) report about Minneapolis police. According to the DOJ’s 2023 report, officers can make up to $150 or $175 an hour for off-duty work.
The officers are paid by outside entities, like bars, clubs or banks, but use city resources like squad cars and weapons during that work. The officers also carry city liability while they are working off duty.
“The officer keeps all the compensation. The City gets nothing,” the DOJ report says.
The DOJ report says that the police department’s policy allows some patrol officers to “manage” the off-duty opportunities, which can give them leverage over their own supervisors. That “undermines supervision at MPD,” incentivizing supervisors to not hold patrol officers accountable, the report says.
The consent decree will limit officers’ ability to manage off-duty work performed by colleagues who hold a higher rank than them, among other changes. The consent decree is still awaiting final approval from a federal judge.
“This is about putting in at least some level of guardrails and accountability through our fee systems to be able to start recuperating the cost of that program,” Wonsley said of the ordinance.
