By David Slone
Times-Union
KOSCIUSKO COUNTY — When the community needs the use of off-duty officers for events, the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office has found a solution to help manage the requests.
Kosciusko County Sheriff Jim Smith told the Kosciusko County Commissioners on Tuesday, June 4, that Lt. Mike Mulligan has been working on a program the last several months called Extra Duty Solutions in regards to filling the needs the community has for off-duty officers.
“This is a system that will be conducive to filling those needs, but I think it will be beneficial to the county,” Smith said.
Mulligan explained Extra Duty Solutions was developed by a retired police officer who dealt with all the extra duty details such as weddings, graduations and “any kind of party somebody wants to have.”
He said the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Office will sign an agreement with Extra Duty Solutions, which is month to month and no cost to the KCSO or the county.
“When someone calls in for a venue security-style detail, they will be forwarded to this Extra Duty Solutions. Extra Duty Solutions will take what we set within our parameters, they will relate to that venue and they will set” it up, he said.
A text message will go out to law enforcement officers that want to be involved and who signed up with Extra Duty Solutions.
Mulligan said Extra Duty Solutions “takes care of handling all the money transactions, they pay the officers upfront. If the venue doesn’t pay, then Extra Duty Solutions will go after that venue for their payment, but the officers are already paid.”
One of the nice things about the program, he said, is that he knows Winona Lake is currently on board with it. “If we have a detail that we can’t get filled, within our parameters, then (Extra Duty Solutions) will send it out to other departments and make sure that the details are filled for the community. They manage all of it, and they pay our guys and then they send us a 1099 at the end of the year,” Mulligan said.
Commissioner Bob Conley said he thought the Indiana State Police did something similar and it’s highly successful for them.
“It just takes a lot of work off of any county employees that are now handling all the overtime details, and it lets this company manage everything,” Mulligan said. “I’ve reached out to several different departments — Tippecanoe County, they use; Ligonier Police Department; Fulton County – and every one of them have had nothing but good things to say about it.”
Smith said an important piece to it is “the collaboration that Mike’s done with all the different agencies — Warsaw Police Department included. I don’t like not being able to fill some of those needs, and we’ve had to turn people away just because we can’t get any interest from the department. Now, with going with this program, it affords us the ability to, we may not be able to fill it with our department, but we can pass it on to another agency that may have an officer that’s willing to go work that. We’re still filling the needs, but we’re kind of sharing it.”
He said it’s very user friendly and he didn’t see any negatives with it. All the police chiefs see the need for it.
Commissioner Cary Groninger made the motion to approve the contract and authorizing the sheriff’s department to sign that contract. The motion passed 3-0.
