Former Akron police lieutenant Mark Farrar quietly turned himself into a one-man booking operation for off-duty security work, lining up private shifts for local employers and taking a cut of the pay while he did it. Investigators say he effectively ran a private scheduling network inside the department. A criminal inquiry in Akron Municipal Court wrapped up this spring with a deal that let Farrar avoid felony charges, as long as he repaid roughly $12,400 to the City of Akron. Internal investigators found that he sometimes booked overlapping hours, pushed outside work through an Akron Police Department listserv, and used department vehicles on those jobs without the paperwork that policy requires. The fallout is now putting fresh heat on city officials to tighten how they police officers' secondary employment.
As reported by Signal Akron, city prosecutors in April struck a municipal court deal that kept the case from escalating into a felony. Farrar entered a no-contest plea and agreed to pay $12,421.31 in restitution. City officials told reporters that the total was meant to cover missing vehicle-use payments along with hours Farrar billed while he was allegedly on duty somewhere else. The agreement did not include jail time or probation, according to the outlet's reporting.
Signal Akron's review of internal affairs and criminal investigation files found that Farrar charged scheduling fees that crept up over time, from about $3 per officer hour to $3.50 and, in some instances, to $5. One client, House Three Thirty, paid him $1,110 in a single month just in scheduling fees, the records show. Investigators also flagged incidents in which Farrar reported more hours than they believed were physically possible and failed to log vehicle use that should have generated payments back to the city. In a 2024 internal affairs interview quoted by the outlet, Farrar defended his role in simple terms: "I mean, my job is to fill jobs."
What Akron’s Rules Require
Under the City of Akron's Secondary Employment Procedure, the hourly rate for off-duty work is tied to the current labor contract, and "No officer shall work or solicit jobs at less or greater than the current scale" without explicit approval. The policy also requires officers to file vehicle-use forms for outside jobs, tells coordinators to document any coordinator fees, and assigns the department's information desk to handle billing and record keeping. On paper, those rules are supposed to keep the system transparent. In practice, according to Signal Akron's reporting, those safeguards did not always function as designed.
Why Off-Duty Details Matter Beyond Akron
Federal investigators and academic researchers have warned for years that poorly policed off-duty detail systems can warp priorities and open the door to abuse. A 2011 Department of Justice review of the New Orleans Police Department labeled that agency's paid-details program "the aorta of corruption," concluding that weak oversight and inconsistent rules undercut integrity and accountability. That finding has since become a touchstone for scholars who study how off-duty work can create incentives for favoritism, loose documentation, and blurred lines between public duty and private paychecks.
In Akron, local advocates and some officials argue that resolving Farrar's case with internal discipline and a restitution check still leaves major questions hanging, including whether the outcome sends a strong enough signal to other officers. The case has already prompted closer scrutiny of off-duty protocols and of what critics describe as a patchwork system that leans heavily on supervisors and coordinators to regulate themselves. City leaders counter that the municipal case at least produced a public record and a concrete repayment to taxpayers, and they suggest that any broader changes will likely have to come through internal audits or future policy reviews rather than the courtroom.
