City officials say they are experimenting over the next several weekends with different deployment options in the Market Place area, a high concentration of bars located in the Central District. The new plan, borrowing elements from Washington and Boston, would likely involve asking business owners to pool money to pay for extra police that would not be tethered to a specific club.
The program could potentially expand to Fells Point, Canton and Federal Hill, officials say. But until then, union President Robert Cherry worries that the added burden of regulating hoards of bar patrons will create an "enormous strain on already depleted" patrols in the department's Southern and Southeastern districts.
Across the country, police departments have varying views on the issue. Officers are banned from such details in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, but it's allowed in some form in many others.
Under Baltimore's current rules, businesses can apply to the police commissioner for uniformed details outside their establishments. The department receives the money from the businesses and selects the officers who will work the details, keeping the staffing random and the pay at arm's length. Officers can also work plainclothes security outside businesses if approved by the commissioner.
"It's not coming out of the city budget - it's private funding for something that benefits taxpayers," Cherry said.
Though officers are working for private businesses, the Police Department often faces liability issues and lawsuits when things go awry. Millennium Security Consulting Group, a security company run by Lt. John Paradise that hires off-duty police, has been sued several times, with the city often named as a co-defendant. Paradise declined to comment while the city rule change is pending.
The department has maintained that officers face a conflict of interest when asked to police an establishment whose owner is paying them. Bealefeld said he is worried about the potential for "an enormous amount of corruptibility, from something as simple as letting an 18-year-old young lady go in a club who shouldn't be there, to turning a blind eye and not taking aggressive action on criminal activity."
