This Advisory Opinion concerns the following issue as formulated from facts and/or circumstances furnished by a requestor. The Commission approved this opinion on February 2, 2001, basing its approval solely on the facts and circumstances stated herein.

May off-duty police officers be compensated in addition to their normal salaries by their city employer for serving "failure to appear" and "old fines" warrants for the city court?

Your opinion request to the Office of the Attorney General dated December 29, 2000, was referred by that Office to the Mississippi Ethics Commission on January 5, 2001, as your request involves the above issue that concern the Mississippi conflict of interest laws.

State law restricts the Mississippi Ethics Commission to interpreting and issuing opinions on Sections 25-4-101 through 25-4-119, 1972 Mississippi Code Annotated and Article IV, Section 109, Mississippi Constitution of 1890. Therefore, this opinion does not address the Mississippi laws outside the Commission's jurisdiction nor the governmental entity's internal rules and regulations.

The pertinent conflict of interest laws to be considered here are:

Code Section 25-4-103(e), (f)(i)(ii), (g)(ii)(iv), (h), (o) and (p)(i)(ii)(iii) states:

"(e) 'Compensation' mean money or thing of value received, or to be received, from any person for services rendered.

(f) 'Contract' means:

(i) Any agreement to which the government is a party; or

(ii) Any agreement on behalf of the government which involves the payment of public funds.

(g) 'Governmental' means the state and all political entities thereof, both collectively and separately, including but not limited to:

(ii) Municipalities; and

(iv) All courts.

(h) 'Governmental entity' means the state, a county, a municipality or any other separate political subdivision authorized by law to exercise a part of the sovereign power of the state.

(o) 'Public funds' means money belonging to the government.

(p) 'Public servant' means:

(i) Any elected or appointed official of the government;

(ii) Any officer, director, commissioner, supervisor, chief, head, agent or employee of the government or any agency thereof, or of any public entity created by or under the laws of the State of Mississippi or created by an agency or governmental entity thereof, any of which is funded by public funds or which expends, authorizes or recommends the use of public funds; or

(iii) Any individual who receives a salary, per diem or expenses paid in whole or in part out of funds authorized to be expended by the government."

Code Section 25-4-105(3)(a) states:

"(3) No public servant shall:

(a) Be a contractor, subcontractor or vendor with the governmental entity of which he is a member, officer, employee or agent, other than in his contract of employment, or have a material financial interest in any business which is a contractor, subcontractor or vendor with the governmental entity of which he is a member, officer, employee or agent."

Pertinent facts and circumstances provided by the requestor, absent identifying data, are set forth as follows and considered a part of this opinion.

I am the Prosecutor for the City. On behalf of the City, I request an Attorney General's Opinion concerning an off-duty municipal police officer being compensated for serving "failure to appear" and "old fines" warrants for the municipal court.

Please consider the following facts and inquiry:

The Municipal Court of the City has numerous outstanding arrest warrants for Defendants who either failed to appear at their court hearing or who have lapsed in the payment of fines. Therefore, the City Court Judge and I are interested in asking City Police Officers to serve these arrest warrants while they are off-duty. Of course, the off-duty officers would be compensated in addition to their normal salaries.

Subsequently, at least tow (2) issues arise: 1) May an off-duty municipal police officer be compensated, in addition to his regular salary, for serving arrest warrants issued for failure to appear in Municipal Court and lack of payment of old fines to the Municipal Court, and 2) if the officer can be compensated for such, in what manner?

Please issue your opinion to my attention at the above-listed address and I will forward to the City. Should you need any further information do not hesitate to call. If you have any questions, please feel free to call my office at anytime.

Based solely on the facts and circumstances presented by the requestor, the Commission's opinion is as follows.

Code Section 25-4-105(3)(a), cited above, prohibits a public servant, including a city police officer, from being a contractor with the governmental entity of which he is an employee.

Therefore, Code Section 25-4-105(3)(a) will prohibit a police officer from contracting with his city employer to perform a service for compensation in addition to the police officer's normal salary including an off-duty police officer serving "failure to appear" and "old fines" warrants for the city court.

In addition, it is the understanding of the Commission that a police officer has the duty to serve criminal warrants without any additional compensation including being paid a percentage of a fine collected for serving a criminal warrant.⁽¹⁾

Ronald E. Crowe

Executive Director

1. See the attached Attorney General's Opinion No. WL 612736, written to Todd Booth and dated September 12, 1997.