As I recall, the law was passed for multiple reasons. While both of these reasons were debated, the primary motivation for the law was to eliminate a lot of small town departments that many saw as unnecessary and poorly trained. At the time it was passed, there were a lot of small cities that had only one or two paid officers and the rest of the department was reserves. There was one department in a suburb of San Antonio that had two paid officers and 40 reserves. The reserves made a living by working the part-time jobs in the area and the city carried their commission in return for one free shift per week. After the law passed, this department had to hire about 8 officers full time to cover their city and it put a lot of part-time officers out of work. In theory, by having the officers working full time for a department, they got better training and supervision.ELB wrote:maybe, but then there's.......
... Ive heard this law was put in place cause the private security sector was crying due to the reserve and part time LEOs taking all the jobs. That may be just a rumor though.
Maybe, but:Frankly my first thought was a rule of this nature would be pushed by full time officers to cut down on the competition, but it's plausible the security companies would have an interest in this as well. Government licensing bureaus tend to end up running protection for the industries they are supposed to supervise. (One giant exception being the BATFE!)...
Just my .02 I don't mind if reserves or part time officers work part time security as long as the full time officers have had a chance at that job first.
To the best of my knowledge, the only cases where this has been enforced have been blatantly ignoring the law. As one way around the law, ask the agency if they will allow you to work 32 hours if the pay is reduced to the same per week as the 24 hour pay. A lot of departments used to do this too, but they may not now because of the ACA definition of who gets insurance benefits.