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Comment by rjmunro | Hacker News Reader

In the UK, I believe that if you organise a large event that needs police coverage, you pay the Police force to provide on-duty officers. This seems a lot less open to corruption because it would be based on a standard price list that was public, and the officers received the same as they would doing any other duties.

I know that's how it worked at some events my Dad organised in the 90s. I can't find anything about this on any Police force website, so it might be that it doesn't work like that any more.

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There was a discussion about this on another HN thread today. [0]

As you've said, the contact is with the police force not with the individual officers, who get paid the same as they would for any other duties.

There was a whole court case [1] about when the police could charge for this sort of coverage, which codified the current arrangement that, at football matches, they can charge for the officers in the stadium but not for the ones outside it.

In the UK, while police are allowed to have outside jobs, any outside employment must be approved by the force, and as a matter of policy security work is banned. Similarly, security guards aren't allowed [2] to be special constables (people who work as part-time unpaid police officers).

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37912396 [1] https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2013/115.html [2] https://www.met.police.uk/car/careers/met/police-volunteer-r...

Oh, hey, I'm not saying off-duty police officers can't do side gigs. I'm more questioning them using publicly funded resources and authority to do so.

Anyone can try to direct traffic, but cops are paid to do it because they get the car and flashing lights (and I assume the ability to ticket/arrest violations) while still collecting side money.

It'd sort of be like me using my company's laptop/servers for side work, I guess.

e: some random source I found -- of course the answer to the question is avoided, other than "it's for the officer's safety" https://www.al.com/on-the-road/2009/12/post_17.html

You would have to prove that trained non-off-duty citizens were prevented from supporting, otherwise you would implement a policy where you shrink the number of people that can take said position and that increases cost for tax payers.

For a lot of the above-board police charges in the US the prices have gone up a lot. Anecdotally, I remember this thread where cycling race organizers talk about how the biggest cost for road races is always police. That's to be expected, but a lot of them mention that those costs have gone up a lot recently

https://www.reddit.com/r/Velo/comments/us0ciu/cost_to_put_on...

That's wild. Personally, I see that (cyclists hiring police officers for route clearing) as a _valid_ implementation of this. Churches/neighborhoods hiring off-duty police officers daily just ease congestion? Seems like a stretch to use publicly funded resources, to me.

Yeah when you need to effect road closures for sure you're costing the municipality something and should have to pay something for that. The congestion easing on otherwise-normally-functioning roads certainly feels shady.

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