The general public is mostly unaware of the process behind officer dispatch. But any police station knows that there is a considerable amount of work that goes into directing a police officer to the site of an accident, a protest, or any other event that requires crowd or traffic direction, as well as interpersonal interactions.

In police officer scheduling, the terms extra duty and special duty refer to times where a police officer is not scheduled to work a regular shift, but they are nonetheless hired to work events paid by third parties. Traditionally, these events were scheduled by personnel in the precincts’ administration departments, but recently, more and more police departments have been making the switch to utilize a new best practice – outsourcing their extra duty management.

In doing so, police departments are now able to leave tedious extra duty administrative work in the hands of scheduling professionals, streamlining the entire process, reducing compliance issues, and overall finding a solution to long-standing challenges. 

Some of the more specific problems extra-duty scheduling faced in the past includes:

• Accepting and dispensing payments. Because police officers in charge of administrative work are not typically trained in bookkeeping, this often results in delayed invoice processing and untimely payment disbursements to officers who have worked extra duty jobs. Maintaining effective communication channels between police and third-party contractors was often challenging to manage.

• Compliance. To remain legally compliant when it comes to scheduling extra-duty officers, administrative work was critical in ensuring that rule sets were followed and officers were being properly scheduled according to those defined rule sets.

• Cost. Precincts who hire outside administrative assistance or spend extra time training officers from within their own precinct must provide additional compensation to officers now handling the administrative aspect of managing extra duty. The necessity for this can be boiled down to three factors: compliance, accurate financial reporting, and expedited scheduling.

Among these issues, the biggest ones include administrative and compliance matters, which constitute the driving factors behind the creation of platforms for extra duty scheduling.

Luckily, Jobs4Blue is dedicated to making the extra duty scheduling challenges of the past obsolete. Our services take over the administrative side of extra duty operations, allowing contractors to work directly with us rather than the police department. For more information on how Jobs4Blue can make extra duty easier for your department, check out our full case study to see just how we did it for Hillside Police Department in New Jersey.

Why wait? Stop stressing and start scheduling with Jobs4Blue today.