I’m a former police officer and I’d love to return to that type of work but I’m older now and would like to avoid night shift at all costs.
Can anyone here think of any uniformed roles that have limited or no overnight work?
My first thoughts were Federal Protective Service and maybe transportation law enforcement (rail or airport).
Comments
School resource officer.
Special Agent with rail like you said. CSX seems to be a cool gig.
Liquor enforcement. Mostly dealing with bars and occasionally special events enforcing minor consumption laws.
They get a monthly stipend to buy food/drink when at bars. They can have like 1-2 beers on duty.
Airport PDs are a 24/7 gig
Court Deputies/ bailiffs/ Marshals only work when the court is open. Typically banker’s hours from 0800-1700. Weekends and holidays off.
Where do you want to live?
School Resource Officer or Court Officer are likely going to be your best options for a uniformed LE job with “banker’s hours”. I’ve done both over the years, and am currently doing the latter.
SRO involves some evenings and Saturdays for athletics and other events, but nothing overnight or on Sunday. May or may not involve patrol shift work during holiday/summer breaks, but that’s less likely if you find a school district with their own PD versus a city that just supplies SROs to their schools during the school year. And even some city agencies put their SROs to work running programs during the summer or similar, rather than simply going back to patrol for a couple months.
Court Officer/Bailiff rarely involves evenings, only if Court happens to run long. And the courts are closed on weekends or holidays. It can be boring, but at a certain point in your life boring isn’t a bad thing.
Another potential option, if you have a federal courthouse nearby: They have Court Security Officers that are contracted with the US Marshals. They almost exclusively hire retired cops, but you might still qualify depending on how much experience you have. They work for a security company that holds the federal contract for your district, but are sworn in as a US Marshal and have federal LE authority while on duty. Same banker’s hours with no evenings/weekends/holidays as a Court Officer with a local LE agency, and sometimes the pay is even better than surrounding LE agencies. But they wear suits rather than a traditional uniform.
Court security
FPS hands down.
College and University police. Quite a few still have night shift but those shifts are minimally staffed for obvious reasons. I worked at a school PD where there would be 10 positions of days and only 2 at night. For most school gigs, you will never work graves unless you want to.
Im sure some park ranger / park police jobs are with limited nights
NPS has parks with no night shift
You still might get called in once in a while
Knowing your state might help
Campus Police Officers
SRO or some agencies have a Community Policing unit that work pharmacy hours and maybe some events in the evenings. That’s how the CP worked at my last agency
Some Sheriffs offices mainly do court type security and work a more traditional Monday through Friday type schedule. Also most SROs work a similar Monday through Friday schedule.