On Tuesday, Jan. 28, a Nashville Electric Service field supervisor was reviewing the list of NES work crews scheduled for the coming days. He noticed that an NES crew was scheduled later that week for repair work along a busy Nashville street. It was the sort of job that can cause traffic snarls. As usual, the field supervisor proceeded to hire an off-duty Metro police officer to help with traffic control.

The NES supervisor dialed 518-9645, the beeper number of Metro Police Sgt. Wallace C. Elmore, who promptly returned the call. After a quick exchange of information, Elmore agreed to supply an off-duty uniformed police officer for that location, as per the supervisor’s request. The entire process took only minutes, but Elmore invoiced NES for two hours of work. It is highly likely that Elmore was on the Metro payroll while he was scheduling a fellow Metro police officer for the off-duty assignment. Still, NES records indicate that Elmore billed the utility company at his overtime rate of time-and-a-half. The charge came to a hefty $59.01, every penny of which showed up on Elmore’s paycheck.

For NES and for Elmore, this was no uncommon occurrence. An NES spokesman says it is accepted that, when Elmore takes a call, the utility will be invoiced for two hours of work. Last year, NES shelled out $382,401 for the services of off-duty Metro police officers. That figure includes $24,425.59 in overtime paid to Elmore, largely for “coordinating” dozens of calls from NES supervisors. The year before, Elmore took home $28,398.72 in “overtime” pay from NES. Every year, such costs are passed along to the electric company’s customers.

Elmore, however, is not alone. He is but one officer among hundreds who participate in the Metro Nashville Police Department’s in-house system of off-duty scheduling. Whenever a public, or quasi-public, agency such as the Metro Water Department, NES, the Metro Health Department, the Nashville Convention Center, or the Metro Development and Housing Agency requires the services of an off-duty police officer, Metro’s finest are more than willing to take the extra money. In 1996, those five agencies ran up a bill of $852,000 in wages and administrative fees paid to Metro police officers, as well as in Social Security taxes and pension payments. That figure is just the tip of the iceberg. It does not even begin to take into consideration the fees that are paid by churches, private businesses, and the hosts of private parties. Much of the time police officers request that they be paid in cash, so there is no record of the transaction.

Metro Police Chief Emmett Turner points out that it is not illegal, per se, for a police officer to request to be paid in cash. Other apparently corrupt aspects of the system are not so easily dismissed.

A six-week investigation by the Scene reveals that the off-duty-assignment system is rife with conflict of interest, misuse of public monies, favoritism, and abuse of power. In a number of instances, the police officers who schedule off-duty assignments also operate their own security companies. There is clear evidence that the scheduling of off-duty assignments is often handled by officers who are supposed to be on the job. What’s more, the schedulers regularly funnel off-duty assignments to their friends. Lucrative overtime work can be a plum for a buddy; or it can be withheld from an uncooperative coworker.

There isn’t anything patently illegal about Nashville’s “informal referral service” for off-duty work. Turner seems to find the system acceptable. “We live in a free-enterprise system,” the police chief says.

At the same time, law enforcement professionals around the country say that such systems have been banned in most cities. Even in New Orleans and Boston, cities with police departments that are reputed to be among the most corrupt in the nation, police officers are prohibited from owning their own security firms. New York, in fact, appears to be the only other major city in the country that permits its senior police officers to own their own security firms. Even in New York, however, police officers aren’t allowed to wear their uniforms while doing off-duty work. In Nashville, meanwhile, officers like Elmore continue to take phone calls and make assignments, cashing overtime checks and passing out favors to friends.

Wallace Elmore claims that he doesn’t bill NES for “taking the calls” that request an officer’s services. Instead, he says he bills the utility for “making calls” to find officers to fill the NES assignments. Elmore says he doesn’t bill NES until he’s worked a full two hours. An NES spokesperson says he is not sure how many officers Elmore was asked to provide when he was called on Jan. 28. But the spokesman says it’s common practice for the company to be billed for two hours of overtime work, even if Elmore is only finding them one officer on any given day.

Elmore insists that he doesn’t make scheduling calls during his 12:30-9 p.m. shift for Metro. He says he makes the calls from home at night, after he gets home from work. That would mean, to judge from his invoices to NES, that he’s on the phone until almost 11:30 every night, making calls to fellow officers on NES’s behalf. He says he passes the assignments around equitably to any officers who want them.

Elmore’s arrangement with NES suggests a blatant abuse of public funds. Moreover, interviews with more than 100 sources—including current and former Nashville Metro police officers, officials at local security firms, experts in the field of law enforcement, and staffers at firms and agencies that employ off-duty Metro officers—reveal that Elmore’s sweet deal has a sour smell about it. Nashville’s entrenched, unsupervised system of off-duty assignments amounts to “an invitation to corruption,” according to Albert J. Reiss, a Yale University faculty member and the author of the National Institute of Justice report Private Employment of Public Police.

The Police Department does not welcome public discussion of its off-duty policy, either by its own officers or by the media. Police Department spokesman Don Aaron initially refused to grant the Scene an interview with Chief Turner to discuss the issue, and he warned the Scene that there would be a $5-per-page charge for photocopying Police Department documents. Such stonewalling came to an end only after intervention from Mayor Phil Bredesen’s office.

The Police Department claims that it has already conducted an investigation of some officers who make off-duty assignments to their colleagues. Last year, the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance received an anonymous complaint about Nashville police officers illegally operating unlicensed security firms. The complaint was referred to the Metro Police Department itself.

The state Commerce Department has its own investigators, but Metro’s Lt. Steve Anderson, who conducted the investigation, says he “volunteered” to look into the matter “as a favor” to a colleague at the Commerce Department. The Metro investigation was concluded in January 1997. Only two possible infractions were reported, and no action was taken against the two officers who appeared to be operating security businesses in violation of state laws. Anderson says he can understand how an “uninformed observer” could term his report a “whitewash,” but he insists that he “investigated the matter thoroughly.” In a written statement, the Commerce Department said it “took appropriate action.” Among the police officials who were investigated was department spokesman Don Aaron.

The seeming abuses of the off-duty system appear to involve the highest echelons of Nashville’s police force. For example, on Monday morning of every week before a big Vanderbilt home football game, Assistant Police Chief Robert P. Russell, who oversees the investigative services bureau at police headquarters, shows up for a 10 a.m. meeting in the second-floor conference room of McGugin Center on the Vanderbilt campus. The purpose of the meeting is to set up security for that week’s game. According to Larry Swoopes, the university’s director of facilities, Russell receives a “consultancy fee” from Vanderbilt for coordinating off-duty officers to work at these games.

Metro police officers seem to have come to accept such behavior as the norm. “They’ve always done things this way, and they don’t think anybody can stop them,” said one police officer who, like many of his colleagues, spoke to the Scene only upon a guarantee of anonymity. “They just don’t give a shit about what’s proper.”

Informed of Russell’s longstanding arrangement with Vanderbilt, Turner, to his credit, said Russell has attended his last Monday-morning meeting on the university campus.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bredesen seems to be honestly embarrassed by the abuses of the off-duty system. Bredesen says that when he appointed Turner police chief in January 1996, one of his first instructions to the new chief was to clean up the off-duty police policy. Turner says he expects a new policy to be in effect within the next few weeks.

Still, the Police Department’s good-old-boy network will not be easy to crack, especially when veteran police officers, like Russell, are raking in money for both themselves and their buddies on the force. “If the police department is going to be respected, they’ve got to be sure the higher management is doing what’s legal and what looks good,” says Sgt. Marvin Keith, president of the Nashville chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police. According to one police officer, “Clearly, there’s an appearance in Nashville that the senior officers are using their influence in improper ways.”

There may be more than a mere “appearance” of impropriety. Often, uniformed officers do legitimately direct traffic and provide security during their off-duty assignments. But the general image of the off-duty cop is different. In recent weeks, even as the Scene’s inves-tigation has been under way, uniformed off-duty officers have been observed on “traffic control” jobs, sitting in their cars munching potato chips or standing on sidewalks chatting with NES crew members, apparently oblivious to passing automobiles.

Recently, NES lawyers discovered a letter, dating from 1989, from Metro’s legal office. The letter indicated that, in many instances, agencies such as NES did not need uniformed officers to direct traffic; the company’s own flagmen could, in fact, do the same work. NES quickly began training its own personnel, and, starting last July, the utility began a dramatic cutback on its use of police officers.

Sources in NES senior management allege that retaliation from Metro was swift. NES vehicles “suddenly” began to be ticketed for a variety of minor violations, and NES employees were “hassled” by police officers.

Even within the department, the system has its threats of retribution. Several Metro police officers—none of whom would speak on the record for fear of retaliation by senior management—say they have been locked out of high-paying private-security jobs because they don’t know “the right people” in the department. Explained one officer, “If you say a word against the system, that’s the end of your career.” In numerous instances, officers expressed fear that, if they were in any way connected with allegations of unfairness concerning the current policy, their careers would be derailed. Their fears may be well-founded.

“There’s always retaliation and reprisal against officers who are willing to speak out against the system,” explains Gary W. Sykes, director of Southwestern Law Enforcement Institute, a Dallas-based management center for law enforcement. “You choose the hill you’re going to die on, and no one’s going to sacrifice their career to change an off-duty system.”

Neither Turner nor his staff can be much surprised to learn about the problems in Nashville’s current off-duty system. As longtime officers on the local force, they must be familiar with the system’s cronyism and its conflicts of interests. In the early 1990s, the Metro Police Department asked an Alexandria, Va.-based criminal justice think tank, the Institute for Law and Justice, to study Nashville’s police force. In April 1993, a resulting report stated: “Virtually from the day it arrived in Nashville, ILJ was aware that senior personnel were extensively involved in outside businesses.” According to the study, “Scheduling of work and appointments within MNPD” always took “off-duty employment into account. Outside obligations influenced the scheduling and duration even of command staff meetings.”

The same report found such scheduling irregularities “vexatious,” but more troubling was “the pattern of influence created within the department.” ILJ found evidence of “power to dispense economic benefits to subordinates apart from formal department processes.” In the Metro Police Department, the report stated, “Alliances are created, favors dispensed or withheld, all at the expense of the real work of the department.” One ILJ consultant’s research was “continually frustrated by a high-ranking officer’s leaving and locking his office so that he could perform his outside security work.”

Four years later, according to dozens of sources in and around the police department, only cosmetic changes have occurred. A security firm owned by Assistant Chief Robert Russell and Maj. Carl Dollarhide was sold last April, but only after Bredesen became personally involved and leaned on Turner.

Bredesen says he didn’t think it looked right for two of Metro’s senior police officers to be in the security business. On the other hand, Russell says that running the security firm, Bass & Russell, had been taking up too much of his time and that he had been trying to sell it for months before Turner became police chief.

Russell and Dollarhide did indeed sell their security firm. But they sold it to another Metro policeman, master patrol officer Steve Antle. At the Nashville Convention Center, event security is handled by Maryland-based Simmons Security Agency, which in turn has retained Antle “to coordinate” its hiring of off-duty cops. The Convention Center shelled out $13,182.50 last year to hire off-duty cops. For the services of those officers, the security firm billed the Convention Center $25 an hour, roughly time-and-a-half, based on the standard pay scale for Metro officers.

Before they can do business in Tennessee, all security services are required to register with the state Department of Commerce and Insurance. When registering, a firm must prove that certain requirements have been met. Among those requirements is the purchase of a minimum of $300,000 in general liability insurance.

The state Department of Commerce and Insurance says Antle’s application to provide private security in Tennessee is still “pending.” Thus, his firm cannot legally provide security services at the Nashville Convention Center, or anywhere else in Tennessee.

Acting as a security company without a license is a misdemeanor, carrying fines of up to $5,000. Antle says his lack of a license is the result of confusion at the Commerce Department. And he says he’s working as an individual when he provides security services at the Convention Center.

A similar sort of confusion surrounds the operations of HPR Enterprises, a security company owned by Capt. Henry Rogers. HPR Enterprises, also known as Rogers’ Protection Services, provides security services for some Opryland properties, including Wildhorse Saloon. Rogers’ Police Department records indicate that he has official permission to do off-duty work at Opryland properties. But, according to a spokesperson at the state Commerce Department, neither HPR Enterprises nor Rogers’ Protection Services is licensed to provide security services in Tennessee. According to Henry Rogers’ attorney, Roger May, the lack of a license is the result of “an oversight” on the part of Rogers’ accountant.

In most other cities around the country, police officers like Antle and Rogers couldn’t own their own security firms anyway. “There’s an obvious conflict of interest,” says Russ Dykstra, spokesman for the Kansas City Police Department. “The fear would be that a police officer could use his public position to support his private business.”

Interviews with Metro officers and internal police documents obtained by the Scene make it clear that the off-duty-hiring system has given birth to plenty of fiefdoms on the police force. Not only does Elmore have a grip on the lucrative NES assignments, but a spokesman for American General Life and Accident Insurance Company confirms that Elmore also coordinates security for that company too. First American National Bank confirms that Sgt. Joel Goodwin is paid to coordinate off-duty officers for the bank.

Officer Mike Smith is paid by Rock Solid Security, the company that provides security services for many of Nashville’s major concerts and other public events, as a “supervising consultant” to provide off-duty officers as needed, according to Rock Solid president Bart Butler. And the list goes on:

Maj. Roy Herald of the Traffic Division schedules what a Police Department report describes as “work activities for a variety of functions.” So does Officer Tom Pigue.

Lt. Freddie Stromatt coordinates off-duty officers, on behalf of Special Security Services, a private security firm, at the state fairgrounds. Just last Friday, opening day for this month’s flea market at the fairgrounds, Police Department records indicate that Stromatt did not show up for work because he was sick. A fairgrounds spokesman says Stromatt was at the flea market on Friday. Stromatt acknowledges that he was at the fairgrounds on that day, but he says he wasn’t getting paid to be there.

Meanwhile, police officers continue to set up off-duty assignments while they’re on the Metro time clock, even though such activities clearly violate the Police Department’s General Order 95-19. That order states: “During their period of duty, employees shall devote their entire time and effort to their duties.”

Officers on the force insist that the incursions are not minor. According to one officer, who was promised anonymity, “We’re not talking about calling your wife or taking a coffee break. These cops are running small businesses from the office. Some even have their secretaries do the scheduling.”

Apparently, as some other Metro departments are beginning to realize that there’s something improper about the current system, these departments are attempting to distance themselves from it. Before they do work on public streets, many businesses—including tree-trimming operations and Nashville Gas—call the Metro Public Works Department to ask whether they will be required to hire off-duty officers for traffic control. In an initial interview with the Scene, Public Works director Marlin Keel said his department maintains a list of police officers who can provide access to off-duty cops. In the same interview, Keel said that Public Works provides the list to outside companies who call the department. He even promised to provide the Scene with a copy of the list.

The next day, however, Buddy Hall, utilities development coordinator at Public Works, called to say that his department had had such a list “years ago” but that copies no longer exist. Even when the list existed, according to Hall, it was just a note with a few names on it, taped up on a bulletin board.

Nevertheless, the Scene has obtained a copy of a Public Works list. It is typewritten and includes the names of numerous police officers. The office phone numbers listed for two of the officers, Tom Pigue and Mike Von Dohlen, are phone numbers at Metro police stations. In an interview with the Scene, Police Chief Turner agreed that, if police officers regularly arrange off-duty employment for themselves or their colleagues while they’re supposed to be on duty, they are clearly in violation of Metro policy.

It’s bad enough for police officers to be conducting private business while they’re on the public payroll, but law-enforcement experts say Metro’s current off-duty assignment system is fraught with even worse problems. Specifically, experts say, the system encourages favoritism, retribu-tion, and the misuse of influence. “Senior officers in cities with policies like Nashville’s are the gatekeepers to a lucrative source of money,” explains Southwestern Law En-forcement Institute’s Gary Sykes. “In some departments where these problems occur, if you want to play ball with them, they expect kickbacks. And if you don’t play ball, they’ll mess with your career.”

Several Metro police officers told the Scene that senior department officials who coordinate off-duty employment make it a practice to schedule “their people” for on-duty assignments that leave them free to work certain off-duty jobs. Other Metro officers said they sometimes feel pressured to work off-duty jobs for businesses that are clients of their superiors’ private security firms. Even if they don’t want the extra money, the officers explained, they fear that pay raises and promotions might be withheld if they don’t help their bosses out. Turner said he is not aware of such abuses of the system, and that strong-arm tactics have no place in his police department. “We’re not the Nazi Gestapo,” Turner said. The police chief said he encourages any officers with concerns to raise them directly to him.

Turner may, in fact, be unaware of specific instances of favoritism and retribution. Meanwhile, earlier this week, Nashville’s federal district court began hearing a suit in which Metro officer Andrew Gluck alleges that senior Police Department officials, including Maj. Carl Dollarhide, used strong-arm tactics against him in the early ’90s. In his suit Gluck alleges that Dollarhide, who owned a private security firm at the time, instructed Gluck to show him a list of businesses that Gluck was intending to fine for alarm-code violations. Gluck contends that Dollarhide was hoping to protect clients of his security firm and that, in so doing, he was abusing his position.

In the wake of his disagreement with Dollarhide, Gluck entered into a pitched battle with Police Department officials, including then-Police Chief Robert Kirchner. In March 1995 he even spoke out in a Metro Council Safety Board meeting. In February of the next year Gluck was reassigned to the midnight shift at the police tow-in lot on Freightliner Drive.

A number of police officers agree that a reassignment to the tow-in lot spells the almost inevitable end of an officer’s career, and Gluck alleges that it was the department hierarchy’s retaliation for his failure to cooperate. Several officers insist that Gluck was used as a public scapegoat in hopes of ensuring that other officers would remain silent. If that was the strategy, it worked. Numerous Metro officers told the Scene they were concerned about abuses of the current off-duty assignment system, but not one of them would speak on the record.

There are other allegations against Dollarhide. One downtown business owner says that Dollarhide, while in police uniform, approached the business owner about using the services of his private security-service firm. The business owner says Dollarhide implied that, if his company’s services were not purchased, the business could no longer depend on prompt assistance from the Police Department. Because of the pending lawsuit in federal court, Dollarhide declined comment on Gluck’s allegations, and he strongly denied that he has ever pressured any business to sign on as a client of his private security firm. Both Gluck and his attorney also declined comment.

In Nashville there are numerous private firms that offer “armed” security services. These private security firms must pay for their own liability insurance and licensing fees, they must buy uniforms and guns, and they must maintain offices. Such expenses can run into the thousands of dollars every year. Under the current system at the Metro Police Department, moreover, these companies must compete with off-duty police officers for business. In many cases the services of those off-duty police officers are coordinated by a fellow policeman working from a desk at a police station.

Private security businesses in Tennessee are governed by the Private Protective Services Licensing and Regulatory Act of 1987. But off-duty police officers can work as security guards and still be exempt from the provisions of the act. They just have to make sure they’ve been hired directly by a private business.

A police officer who makes assignments for his fellow officers does not have to pay for general liability insurance or state licensing fees. If that officer conducts his business from a desk at police headquarters, he does not even have office expenses. As far as local security firm owners are concerned, that gives police officers an unfair advantage in the marketplace.

“How am I supposed to bid against the firms that are run by cops when I’m paying overhead of $3 an hour per man, and the cops don’t pay a penny?” asked one owner of a private security firm in Nashville.

When the Scene spoke with representatives of 11 private security services, all but two of them refused to speak on the record. In each case, the company representative said he feared reprisal from the Metro Police Department.

Robert Kirchner served as Metro’s police chief from 1989 to 1995. During his tenure, well-placed Metro sources say, Kirchner was strongly opposed to reforming the off-duty system. Today, Kirchner denies that such was the case. “The off-duty policy is not perfect,” admits Kirchner, who now heads up security operations for Gaylord Entertainment Company. “But when we looked at changing it, there was outrage both from the force and from people who hired the off-duty officers.” In essence, Kirchner decided to leave well enough alone.

Gary Odom, a Metro Council member until 1995, battled unsuccessfully to reform the system under Kirchner’s regime. Now a state representative, Odom says, “The resistance within the top management of the police department was tremendous.”

If Kirchner didn’t feel motivated to overhaul the department’s off-duty policy, Metro sources say Turner, his successor, may lack the clout to overhaul the good-old-boy system. It’s not that Turner approves of the system. Sources simply suggest that, because Turner is still relatively new to the job, he may be wary of alienating high-ranking Metro officials, powerful constituencies on the force, and even the run-of-the-mill cops who are, after all, his former fellow officers. If Turner were to dismantle the system, well-connected officers like Robert Russell would be deprived of a regular flow of money that they have relied on for years. (Russell’s annual financial disclosure form filed in 1996 showed $20,848 in non-government income. The Police Department personnel office says Russell’s current salary as a police officer is $69,607.)

According to Hubert Williams, president of Police Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based organization dedicated to improving policing in the U.S., “Nashville’s policy [concerning off-duty assignments] does appear somewhat unique.” But that doesn’t mean Nashville’s system is all bad. Off-duty employment does serve a worthwhile purpose.

Metro police officers are woefully underpaid, starting out of the police academy at $24,667 and topping out at $35,438. Off-duty employment provides a much-needed source of additional income. What’s more, there is a legitimate need in Nashville and other cities for police officers to provide crowd control at football games or at concerts where it wouldn’t be appropriate for the city to foot the bill. Inevitably, a uniformed police officer, off-duty or not, provides a much greater deterrent to crime than a security-firm employee ever could.

Nevertheless, the troubling questions persist: First, if lucrative off-duty assignments are going to exist, who should get them? And secondly, how should they be assigned? “When you’ve got police officers brokering off-duty deals, you’re going to have problems,” says Darrel Stephens, chief of police in St. Petersburg, Fla. Stephens’ police force, like the police department in nearby Tampa, has set up what amounts to an “off-duty office.” Requests for off-duty officers, whether they’re submitted by a church or by a movie director, are funneled to the off-duty office.

The department charges a set, hourly fee for the services of any off-duty officer. Any officer who wants off-duty work signs up with the office, and assignments are offered on a first-come-first-served basis. The department takes a small commission, which covers the expense of running the office.

Before Tampa cleaned up its off-duty system, it looked a lot like Nashville’s. “In our old system, it was a matter of who you knew. Younger officers couldn’t get jobs until they paid their dues,” says spokesman Steve Cole of the Tampa Police. “There was some resistance when we set up a fair system, but it’s fallen into place.”

Bredesen seems adamant that it’s time for Nashville’s police force to get its off-duty act together. “If there are problems [in the police department], it’s got to stop,” the mayor says. Turner insists, “If I’m made aware of abuses, I’ll put a stop to them.” Indeed, just days after the Scene presented him with a list of possible abuses in the police department’s off-duty system, Turner met with some of the officers about whom specific questions had been raised.

In the meantime, every Metro police officer who coordinates the hiring of off-duty cops for a private client is in a position to offer high-paying jobs to his cohorts. What’s more, there’s little disguising the fact that off-duty work goes on during on-duty hours.

On a recent weekday, the Scene called the private security firm Rock Solid and left a message inquiring about hiring off-duty police officers.

Within minutes, the call was returned—by Metro police officer Mike Smith. Asked if he was working for the police department at that particular moment, Smith had only a vaguely cagey response:

“That depends on who’s calling,” he replied.