We often get called on to cover police security details that go unfilled.

Here’s the common scenario: The person or group needing a security detail will submit their need for a security detail to their local police department. If the local police can’t fill the detail, it gets kicked around to a few neighboring departments that share detail information and more often than not, if it’s a security detail, it goes unfilled.

If the security detail goes unfilled, the person needing the security detail will look for another source to cover their security needs and if they find us, we will cover it.

What type of police details most often get passed over and go unfilled?

Covering an unfilled police security detail on Cape Cod

The most common police detail to go unfilled is the security detail and that’s where we come in.

The reason that these security details go unfilled is that security details usually overlap regular police duty shifts.

Many security details are long overnight shifts that do not coincide with regular police department shifts. Most police departments have evening shifts that run 3pm-11pm, or 4pm-midnight.

Many security details that people are looking to get the police to fill overlap these shifts. Often these details require lengthy coverage like 6pm-6am or from 9pm-2 or 3am that more often than not overlap the regular duty shifts.

This makes security details unattractive to most police officers since they can’t choose a security detail over their regular shifts. If a police officer works the day shift, then the long 10, 11, 12 hour or longer overnight security shifts don’t really fit in to their schedule either.

Police security detail costs and minimum hours

Most local police departments get ~$50 per hour for details and many charge a 10% administrative fee on top of that. If the detail requests that the officer use a marked department cruiser there are additional fees to cover that as well.

Police departments most often require a 4 hour minimum and the details are billed in 4 hour blocks. So, if you need a 6 hour detail covered, they charge for 8 hours and so on.

Nearly all the calls we get to fill unfilled police security details, are last minute.

The person will have submitted their detail and they’ll be notified the day of the detail or the day before that it was not filled and then they will call us.

What should you do if you need a security detail?

If you need a security detail filled, give us a call ahead of time, or even last minute, we can usually cover it and for less than the cost of a police detail.

If you prefer the local police to handle your security detail, then by all means put a security detail request in with your local police department. Keep in mind that there are some advantages to hiring private security over police for security details on private property.

Just remember that if your security detail goes unfilled, and they often do, you can call us anytime 24/7/365 at (774) 383-2030 and we will get it covered.