Puerto Rico's 2025 Police Act: what changed for officers

What the law did: the Police became autonomous again

Act 83-2025, enacted July 30, 2025, created the **Puerto Rico Police** as an entity with **administrative and fiscal autonomy**. Its statement of motives puts it bluntly: the force «has faced serious setbacks since its conversion from an autonomous entity into a Bureau attached to another government agency». In other words, it undid the absorption into the Department of Public Safety.

In practice that means its own budget line within the general budget, supreme authority in the Governor, and immediate administration and supervision delegated to the Superintendent.

If you are in the force or thinking of joining, what follows is what changes in your day to day as an employee, not the organizational part, but the one touching your schedule, your wallet and what you may do off duty. The statute has already been amended three times (Act 89 of 2025, Act 3 of January 2026 and Act 139 of July 2026), so the older versions circulating out there are no longer good.

Your workday: 8 and 40, unless you are excluded

Article 10 sets the legal workday at **no more than eight hours a day nor more than forty a week**. But it carries an important exclusion worth knowing before accepting a promotion: members performing **administrative, executive and supervisory** duties, and those in Police **training courses**, fall **outside** that article. For them, the Superintendent sets daily and weekly schedules and grants days off.

Everyone else who works beyond that workday is entitled to have those hours paid at **time and a half**. And there is an option the statute places in the officer's hands, not the employer's: **you may substitute compensatory time for the cash payment**. The choice is yours.

Time you spend in court as a witness, or summoned to appear officially before any official, body or government or municipal commission, **counts as time worked** toward your legal workday and for computing overtime, provided you file the report evidencing your work and intervention.

Your overtime pays no income tax

This is the highest-dollar fact in the whole statute and almost nobody mentions it. Article 10(d) provides that income earned from **overtime worked by a police officer shall not be included in gross income and shall be exempt from taxation**, pursuant to Act 1-2022, the Police Officers' Bill of Rights.

Read it slowly: it is not a deduction or a credit. That income **does not enter gross income at all**. An overtime hour at time and a half reaches you whole.

That completely changes the arithmetic of taking extra shifts, and also of comparing yourself to any other public employee whose overtime is taxable. If you are deciding between cash and compensatory time, this is a variable to put on the scale.

The trap: bad paperwork voids the payment

And here is the flip side, in the same article. Article 10(b) empowers the Superintendent to set the procedure for authorizing, justifying and paying overtime, and then says something worth reading twice: **any overtime payment request that does not comply with all the requirements set in the regulation shall be void and payment shall not proceed**.

Void. Not «returned for correction», not «delayed». You worked the hours and the right to collect them is lost if the request fails **any** requirement of the internal regulation.

The practical consequence is direct: the Superintendent's regulation on authorizing and justifying overtime is not bureaucratic paperwork to take lightly. Get it, read it, and follow the procedure to the letter every time. It is the difference between being paid and not.

On when you get paid: Article 10(c) sets a maximum term of **forty-five days**. There is one exception, and it is narrow: when the hours are worked in a situation where, for national security, extraordinary vigilance is warranted, and **the Governor must certify** that exceptional situation for the Superintendent to be relieved of the deadline.

When you are required to stay

Article 10(e) is explicit: Police members **are required** to work beyond the legal workday in two situations.

The first is **force majeure or emergency**, and the statute names them: earthquakes, fires, floods, **hurricanes**, **election periods**, riots and any others the Governor declares. The second is when, out of service necessity and for the public benefit, the Superintendent so determines.

That the obligation exists does not erase the right to pay. The hours are still overtime at time and a half, tax-exempt, with their forty-five-day term, and with their requirement that the request comply with the regulation. Hurricane season and election periods, the two that generate the most hours, are exactly when having the procedure clear in advance matters most.

A second job in private business, and with the weapon

Article 11 opens by reminding you of something you already knew: you are a police officer at all times and anywhere in the jurisdiction, even off duty, with all the duties and powers the statute imposes.

But the same article opens the door to a second job: members **may in their free time take up other tasks, trades or professions in private business**, as long as those duties are not contrary to the objectives and purposes the statute confers on the Police.

It is not wide open. The Superintendent is empowered to set **by internal regulation** which tasks, trades and professions may be performed outside the workday, **the maximum hours** that may be worked, and any other necessary conditions.

And there is a provision that matters a great deal to anyone working in private security: members **authorized by the Superintendent** for such work **may use their service weapon** in performing it, but only if the activity **is covered by liability insurance** and that fact is **duly evidenced** to the Superintendent. The three conditions are cumulative: authorization, insurance and evidence.

The ten ranks, and a rule that takes you out of Act 8-2017

Article 12 sets the full ladder, and the Superintendent establishes by internal regulation both the ranks and the promotion procedures:

• Cadet
• Officer (Agente)
• Sergeant
• Second Lieutenant
• First Lieutenant
• Captain
• Inspector
• Commander
• Lieutenant Colonel
• Colonel

Why that last point matters so much

Article 12(c) says something that changes where you must look for your rules: members of the **Rank System are not subject** to the provisions of **Act 8-2017** regarding **mobility, recruitment, evaluations, transfers and promotions**. All of that is governed by the internal regulation the Superintendent adopts.

Act 8-2017 is the public service human resources administration statute. Its not applying to you on those five matters means that looking there for how a transfer works or how a promotion is evaluated will not help: the answer is in the Police's internal regulation, not in the general public service law.

It is exactly the kind of detail that costs people time (and sometimes deadlines) reading the wrong rulebook.

Retired and back: reservists who keep their pension

Article 17 settles a question that is answered the opposite way elsewhere in Puerto Rico's government. The Superintendent may hire as a **reservist** any veteran or retired employee of the Police's classified system who was pensioned through mandatory retirement by age or years of service (after evaluation and certification by the Police Medical Affairs Office that their physical and mental condition allows it) and **without impairing the pension** they already receive.

There are clear caps: the Superintendent sets the time and pay, which **shall not exceed a full eight-hour workday** nor the **maximum salary** a full-time employee doing that same work would receive.

What is legally notable is how it achieves this. Normally, a government pensioner who takes a paid post loses or has their annuity suspended; that is what Article 1 of Act 187 of 1952 and Article 4 of Act 40 of 1959 provide. Article 17 **expressly excepts** reservists from both. They collect the reservist salary **and** the pension under Act 447 of 1951 or whichever system applies, and the hiring does not impair any acquired benefit or right as a pensioner.

The 10% raise when stepping down from Associate Superintendent

A narrow rule in Article 6 worth knowing if you are offered a trust position. The Associate Superintendent post is classified under the **trust service**: it is held at the Superintendent's discretion and can be relieved at any time.

Now, if the holder is a Police member and performed those duties for **twelve months or more without interruption**, upon ceasing they return to their corresponding permanent rank and are granted a **salary increase equal to ten percent (10%) of base salary**, with a condition the statute writes verbatim: **«if the fiscal situation permits»**.

That last phrase is not decoration. It is the difference between a right and an expectation, and it is worth bearing in mind before accepting the appointment while counting on the raise.

Associate Superintendents may also carry firearms for their own and their family's protection **even after leaving** the position, so long as they show they remain mentally and physically fit.