Despite Chicago having one of the most lenient moonlighting policies for big-city police officers, some aldermen are looking to make the rules even looser and allowing off-duty cops to begin working security at bars and liquor stores.

A panel of City Council members is expected later this month to tackle the controversial idea that is part of a citywide policy that also prevents police officers from owning taverns or being bartenders. The ownership restrictions would remain in place under the proposal.

The measure is supported by some aldermen but was first pushed by West Side Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th. While Ervin said bars and liquor stores can be “magnets for negative activities” he doesn’t think it is right for the city to forbid those businesses from hiring security guards who can arrest people, if needed, or for the city to prevent officers from legitimate employment.

“Regular security officers don’t have the power to arrest, don’t have any statutory authority to do anything other than security,” Ervin said, adding private security guards can only detain people until an officer arrives. “A police officer can work at Home Run Inn but not a liquor store. I didn’t understand the logic of that. … Everyone should be able to have off-duty (Chicago police officers). If (Home Run Inn) can have it, anybody else should.”

But the proposal has drawn criticism from watchdogs who note the expansion could contribute to officer burnout and open up the city to liability issues.

Critics also said there was no pressing justification to expand outside employment when Chicago cops already have a more lenient policy than peers in other big departments and that if the policy was to change it should be done thoroughly and not on a piecemeal basis.

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg said Ervin’s proposed order is not only an “unusual mechanism for CPD policymaking,” but noted officers are already subject to fewer rules around outside jobs than other city workers.

“Most city employees have to get permission to work a job outside their city job. Most CPD employees do not,” she said.

Ervin’s proposal was initially scheduled to be debated Friday during the council’s Police and Fire Committee meeting, where Mayor Brandon Johnson’s appointment of Larry Snelling as Police Department superintendent also faced its first aldermanic vote. Although aldermen canceled that meeting, its chair, Ald. Chris Taliaferro, 29th, said he planned to have both items heard later this month and Taliaferro, a former Chicago cop, voiced general support for loosening the moonlighting ban.

Taliaferro said he worked multiple jobs and went to law school while he worked for the Police Department and noted he does not support another proposed ordinance prohibiting aldermen from any type of outside employment.

“In my opinion, to say you can or cannot work somewhere to help meet your needs is somewhat out of what I believe we should be dabbling in as elected officials,” Taliaferro said. “There’s a justice system if someone decides to go astray.”

[ Second jobs for Chicago aldermen would be restricted or even banned under proposed ordinance ]

Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, who chairs the council’s Public Safety Committee, said he supported Ervin’s proposal. He has sometimes required businesses’ operation plans to include security that are staffed by off-duty police — most are from suburban departments.

“Why are we purposely denying Chicago residents who happen to be police officers extra income if they want?” Hopkins asked.

During his tenure as an alderman, Ervin has supported efforts pushed by liquor stores both citywide and in his ward.

The Tribune previously detailed that Ervin didn’t stand in the way of allowing Da Icehouse, the only stand-alone liquor store in the ward at the time, to extend its hours despite violence and liquor license violations there in the past. Ervin also received thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the liquor store’s operators. Ervin was also one of the aldermen who pushed back on former Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s liquor store curfew during the COVID-19 pandemic.

[ How ‘Da Icehouse’ got a late-night liquor license in high-crime Austin ]

According to current directives — last updated in April — CPD employees are barred from working in bars, liquor stores, as well as “engaging directly or indirectly in the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a tavern or retail liquor establishment,” or serving “as a bartender to dispense intoxicating liquor or to serve as a cocktail waiter/waitress.”

There is a separate CPD rule that has been in place since 1979 barring officers from “engaging directly or indirectly in the ownership, maintenance, or operation of a tavern or retail liquor establishment.”

Police Department employees are also not allowed to work for licensed cannabis dispensaries, growing operations or transportation companies; businesses that would “bring either the Department or the Department member into disrespect or disfavor”; or result in a conflict of interest. Nor are officers supposed to work when they are on the medical roll for any reason.

But CPD does not have a way of tracking where most of its employees work in their off hours. Exempt and civilian employees are required to fill out an outside employment form and receive approval to work outside jobs. Captains, lieutenants and sergeants must fill out a secondary employment notice that reports their expected hours and employer if they want to hold an outside job.

But sworn, unionized members are not required to disclose outside employment or seek permission to work a second job, according to the directive. Contract provisions for sworn officers represented by the local Fraternal Order of Police state cops aren’t required to “disclose any item of his or her property, income, assets, source of income, debts, or personal or domestic expenditures.”

CPD’s secondary employment policy is one of the weakest of the nation’s largest police departments, a 2017 review by the Chicago Reporter and WBBM-Ch. 2 found. Of the 50 biggest departments the news outlets reviewed, 48 required officers get permission to work a second job and more than half required officers fill out paperwork about those second jobs at least annually. More than two-thirds of departments limited the number of hours officers could work outside their police hours, and 28 banned work for specific industries such as casinos, strip clubs or acting as a broker for a private security company.

Though records and interviews suggested cops worked at bars anyway, the department’s bureau of internal affairs did not discipline any officers for violating the policy between 2010 and 2017, the report found.

There is also more of a liability risk if the city loosens the policy, Witzburg said.

The Department of Justice and others raised concerns about CPD officers moonlighting in its 2017 investigation into police use of force in Chicago. A DOJ footnote stated a “significant amount of alleged officer misconduct” involved off-duty work. While federal authorities did not “fully investigate” CPD oversight of secondary jobs, “the review that we did undertake indicated that there is a need for a thorough review of the policies and accountability measures related to officers’ secondary employment.”

The Reporter/CBS-2 report found the city had paid more than $10 million in settlements for 32 lawsuits involving cops working other jobs.

A 2017 city inspector general’s office review also raised concerns about officer fatigue, stress and burnout from secondary employment. The IG’s office — at the time led by Witzburg’s predecessor Joe Ferguson — encouraged the city to pursue “a more rigorous” secondary employment policy when it was negotiating its new contract with officers.

Staffing issues and morale make the burnout question even more relevant, Witzburg said.

“We need officers well enough rested to make decisions that are safe,” she said. “How much time people are spending working second jobs is part of that question, part of that concern.”

But no moonlighting changes were included in the agreement Lightfoot signed with the FOP in 2021. It was a “risk management issue” that Lightfoot told Axios she wanted to still address in arbitration talks with the union.

Ervin said he hadn’t discussed the change with union leadership.

FOP President John Catanzara confirmed that loosening the policy was not an idea he or the union proposed, saying he had no idea what prompted the sudden and “bizarre” attempt to change the rules.

“It’s not something we championed or pushed or even asked about,” he said. He added the city has for the last two years sought to implement a secondary employment agreement with the FOP that, he said, would restrict “our ability and amount of hours we can work secondary employment, where we can work, we have to notify the city and all this stuff.”

[ CPD union’s new leader is a cop facing discipline related to police report he once filed against Eddie Johnson ]

Catanzara was previously disciplined for working a side job as a security guard for a restaurant when he was supposed to be on medical leave for a back injury.

Ed Yohnka, a spokesperson with the ACLU of Illinois, said in an email that the proposal is “a bad idea and a distraction.”

“Already, staffing shortages have led to CPD delaying critical steps toward reform — including trainings and implementation of a community policing model,” he said. “Officers long have been barred from these jobs; there is not a good argument for changing that policy at this critical moment.”

But Taliaferro also offered a potential middle ground on the proposal, saying perhaps officers working second jobs could be required to carry their own liability insurance.

“It’s at the risk of his own insurance having to possibly pay out any claims as a result of negligence or liability,” he said.

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