Job question

I am currently a Sgt. in Miami Fl. and have been on 12 years. I have a great retirement and make good money. However, just like most other people in our dept. we are not happy and very disgruntled. This place is becoming miserable to work at. Anyways I am very traffic oriented and am think of applying with DOT or FHP. Give me a stretch of highway, a ticket book, and I am happy. I have a few questions the the DOT recruiter doesn't seem to be able to or want to answer. I want to stay in the Miami area and was wondering do the higher ups frown on you doing radar or traffic enforcement on cars also instead of just commercial vehicles? Is it tru there is no night shift? Is it true you dont work weekends? Since the pay is about half of what I make is there a good amount of O.T. available in the Miami area? And is there enough off duty available? I see FHP working everywhere off duty but I never see DOT. I am leaning more toward DOT because I was told by the recruiter that at your acandemy its all class and not all the physical stuuf that I already went through in the academy. FHP has running and all that stuff all over and I have been there done that. How does the take home policy work. Do you need to insure your car for offduties? How often are the cars replaced? ANy info you give me on this stuff would help a lot. Thanks.

Hey Sgt.

I don't work for FDOT yet, though I ultimately want to go there. I have a close friend who works there and has answered a lot of those questions for me but not all of them, so i can try answer some as best I can. I'm sure another FDOT officer will be able to expand on some of your questions, and answer the ones I'm not sure of.

On the cars, I get the idea that it's not a problem, unless you find yourself pulling over more cars than trucks, your primary emphasis is on CMVs. I know another FDOT officer that wrote a ticket to a car driver for loud music, so you're not limited to just trucks, i guess you just have to be focusing more on them.

The shifts are normally 6am to 2pm and 2pm to 10pm

You normally get weekends off, but I think maybe once a month or so you might work a Saturday, but you'll probably have another day off during the week.

On OT, I think its just been extended to 12 hours/week until the end of June.

Off duty I'm not sure on, i know you can do it, i don't think its something they advertise too much about.

I'm pretty sure its all classwork in the FDOT academy.

Not sure on the other questions....if an FDOT Officer has a more accurate response, please correct me, I'm still learning too.

Hope that helps a bit

Thanks for the info. I noticed there are a lot of views but no replys. Anyways yeah the O.T. and offduty is a big selling point for me because I know I wont live off of $36,000. a year. I cant seem to ever find a DOT officer on the street. At work I am always looking when I am on the highway but never run into one so I can ask. Well thanks again for the info. Hopefully on officer who works the Dade County area will respond to my questions before I apply.

Well I dont work in Miami, but I can answer some of your questions. It all depends on your supervisor about the traffic enforcement. But if you dont have to many cars and not enough truck activity no one should have a problem with it. I am not sure about the off duty down in Miami, but we do have overtime, 24 hours per pay period. We do have take home cars, you do have to insure it for off duty work. They try to replace the cars between 80-100 thousands miles. I am not sure about Miami but most of the state there are two shifts. 6a=2p and 2p=10p and usually one weekend day a month. Hope this helps.