By Justin Fenton and Sam Sessa , justin.fenton@baltsun.com and sam.sessa@baltsun.com|November 08, 2008
Concerned that officers are being drawn into an escalating number of violent incidents, Baltimore plans to prohibit police from working off-duty jobs outside bars, clubs and other businesses with liquor licenses, a move that has frustrated the officers' union, business owners and some city officials.
The change comes as Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III and Mayor Sheila Dixon have challenged troubled businesses to provide better security, and it will take effect just weeks after police launched a significant crackdown on overtime amid budget constraints. Many officers work such jobs to supplement their incomes by thousands of dollars, and the security details add numerous officers to the streets at peak hours, paid entirely out of business owners' pockets.
But Bealefeld says the business owners rely too much on the officers and not enough on private security. Long-standing rules prohibit police from working inside businesses where alcohol is served, and Bealefeld worries the current arrangement leaves the off-duty officers to handle situations that have already gotten out of control.
"We got into this notion that it made more sense to hire off-duty cops because you'd have more cops all over the city, and ostensibly the city would be safer," Bealefeld said. "It's just not so. What's happened is that the businesses have transferred their responsibility onto the Police Department ... and that's not a responsibility or a liability I'm willing to assume."
Last year, off-duty officers working overtime security details killed armed men outside the South Baltimore hot spot Club Mate and inside a downtown parking garage. Last week, the city approved a $50,000 payout to an Edgewater man who accused six off-duty officers of beating him outside the Power Plant Live area.
And in late September, a 21-year-old Towson University student was beaten into a coma at the Iguana Cantina, which typically employs a half-dozen officers outside on busy nights.
"When people wind up in a coma in a club that I have cops working secondary at and no one knows anything, or cops are throwing unruly, drunken, disorderly, combative, violent patrons out on the street, only for them to shoot and stab and kill each other, is unacceptable," Bealefeld said. "I have a simple answer: My cops won't work at businesses that sell alcohol."
