Police officers by day, chefs by night…

FUN FACT: The number of federal police officers with dual roles has steadily increased in recent years. And while the range of side jobs is wide, our law enforcement officers are primarily found in the restaurants industry.

This image was generated by AI (Dall-E)

Chicken in the restaurants, no surprise, some childish commentators will dare. A service weapon and a bulletproof vest are not too much to survive in the industry, restaurant owners might ironize. The fact is that the number of federal police officers with a secondary activity has almost doubled in five years: from 321 declarations in 2020, the figure rose to 639 last year (+99%).

As the Minister of Security and Home Affairs indicated in a written parliamentary response, the range of side jobs of our police officers is very broad. It ranges, in descending order, from the field of training and teaching to gardening and construction, from services (sales, driver, etc.) to sports, including music, craft and care activities.

But one sector in particular attracts them primarily: the hospitality industry. The only slight drawback is that the minister's statistics stop there, leaving even the most curious who wanted to know where the most caps are found wanting. In front of a pizza oven or in the back kitchen of a sushi shop, as a bed and breakfast manager or as a sommelier in a posh hotel...

The information is all the more fragmentary because it only concerns data at the federal level. What is missing is data from the local police, whose separate authorities are solely responsible for evaluating requests to practice a secondary profession.

Finally, it should be noted that around sixty applications submitted by federal police officers were rejected during the period under review. The rules on multiple positions, which were relaxed in 2020, maintained "absolute incompatibilities" for employment, even unpaid employment. It is prohibited for an officer to work in an emergency service, as an ambulance driver, nor to act as a private rural police officer, or to give driving lessons in an approved driving school.