San Antonio Express-News
SAN ANTONIO, Texas — Bexar County deputies who provide security for bars and nightclubs will have to moonlight elsewhere because of a new sheriff’s department policy that took effect this month.
The policy, implemented March 1 on orders of Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz, prohibits deputies from working part time for establishments that generate more than 50 percent of their sales from alcohol.
The rule change comes little more than a month after an off-duty deputy shot and killed a man outside a North Side bar in January. Though the deputy has been cleared of any wrongdoing, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman said the change was made to stem a growing number of officer-involved incidents at bars over the past year.
“There was already a fire brewing, and the incident in January sort of threw the match in there and set it ablaze,” said Deputy Chief Dale Bennett. “It’s a privilege that the sheriff had afforded these officers, and there’s plenty of other work out there for them.”
The number of deputies employed by bars across the county - and the number of bars in which they’re employed - was not immediately available, but officials said they thought the number of officers was in the hundreds.
Before the change in policy, between 35 and 40 bars were on a “no work” list that prohibited deputies from working there because of previous incidents such as fighting, Bennett said.
Though deputies were not allowed to work inside bars, they often were stationed outside in the parking lot, where fights tended to spill out, Bennett said. He said a growing number of injuries among officers - the exact number was unavailable but most were from breaking up drunken fights - had made the policy a liability.
“We have some facilities where we never have any problems,” he said. “But it was getting difficult for us to say ‘You can work at this establishment but not this one.’ The list was getting bigger and bigger.”
San Antonio police officers also can’t work inside bars but are permitted to work outside establishments where alcohol is served, said Matt Porter, a police spokesman.
David Kilcrease, vice president of the Deputy Sheriffs Association of Bexar County, said he expected the new rule to put even more strain on the wallets of many deputies already strapped for cash.
“We are in the sixth-largest county in Texas, but our officers are paid in the bottom 50 percent of the state’s 254 counties,” he said. “Our guys have no choice but to work part time.”
He said many Bexar County deputies work an average of eight to 10 hours per week of part-time employment, everywhere from Spurs basketball games to restaurants. Unless they’re on vacation, Kilcrease said, officers can perform no more than 23 hours of part-time work a week. He said most jobs average about $25 an hour but special events can bring as much as twice that.
Kilcrease noted that although declaring bars off-limits was unpopular with a number of deputies, he believed most in the department understood the decision.
Ortiz “knows they’re underpaid, and he knows they need to work,” he said. “He’s not trying to take food off their table. He’s strictly trying to protect the citizens of Bexar County from lawsuits that could arise if the policy didn’t change.”
Copyright 2010 San Antonio Express-News