Former Akron Police lieutenant profits from booking outside work for officers, himself, at excessive rates

Lt. Mark Farrar developed a reputation from 2017 to 2025 as the guy who could book outside work gigs for Akron Police officers and security shifts for area businesses. 

Follow the full story: See Part 1 of Doug Brown’s reporting on Mark Farrar’s brokering of outside employment gigs for Akron Police officers.

Friends of police officers went to him, a sergeant on the information desk sent him job requests, and people knew he was the contact, he told Akron Police’s internal affairs department in 2024.

He explained why he had a hazy memory about specific details on the jobs they were asking about: “Some people just know that I schedule jobs and refer ’em to me. So because I filled hundreds, I can’t separate one from the other” on how they began.

“I mean, my job is to fill jobs,” Farrar said in a 2024 internal affairs interview — his salaried job was as a lieutenant helping oversee the department’s information technology systems. “Everybody knows that’s my thing. That’s what I do. I hustle. I fill extra jobs.”

As Farrar sought to fill more jobs, he often sent mass emails on an APD listserv openly advertising jobs at rates higher than regulation, occasionally drawing stern emails and letters from deputy chiefs about the rules. But he met with few repercussions beyond a five-day suspension in 2024 for overbilling the hourly rate, overbilling his cut and not filing paperwork connected with six businesses. Investigators only looked into a small portion of his long-term jobs at the time.

At House Three Thirty, one of the many outside clients Farrar worked with in 2023 and 2024,  internal affairs investigators wrote that he made $1,110 in a month in those “scheduling fees” alone after raising his cut from $3 to $3.50 for every hour an officer worked there. Later records show he had been charging some businesses $5 hourly scheduling fees.

“I can only schedule so many extra jobs,” he said about his cut during the 2024 investigation. “You know, my bandwidth is kinda full so am I gonna get paid for my work, yes. I absolutely am. Do I think this is unreasonable? 1000% no.”

He also repeatedly worked many of those jobs himself.

Records from a 2025 criminal investigation compiled by Signal Akron show that Farrar often billed multiple jobs for overlapping hours — sometimes overlapping with his day job, sometimes overlapping with other outside jobs — with only a few hours on certain days not earning him money. He also failed to document his use of APD cruisers, circumventing payments the APD was entitled to from the external employers.

Why we wrote this two-part series:

Akron’s police department is funded with local tax dollars — public entities owe it to the community to make sure public resources are used wisely.

Set rates for outside police employment consisting of a cap and a floor at the same rate, are essential safeguards against corruption.

A law enforcement agency’s trust depends on an equal administration of justice for those with power and those without it. If those with money and power — such as Farrar — can walk away from a grand scheme with a minor misdemeanor and a small restitution check while those without power are prosecuted to the fullest extent possible — such as two city maintenance workers Signal Akron Government Reporter Doug Brown highlighted in the series — it calls into question the fairness of the system.

Akron’s police officers sign an oath to protect and serve. That includes protecting the force’s public reputation, which includes business owners who may not have been able to afford higher fees.

That probe showed Farrar often claimed to work 21 hours in a 19-hour period.

The Akron lieutenant investigating Farrar criminally last year, Matthew Whitmire, documented a portion of his activities using physical surveillance, parking garage surveillance cameras, Flock cameras (which record car license plate numbers as they pass by), key card activations, schedule entries, call-in records and missing entries in the extra job portal.

On frequent Mondays, Farrar was scheduled for:

• A full eight-hour shift with the APD from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.
• An overlapping four-hour job on the payroll of a mental health nonprofit, typically from 3 p.m to 7 p.m., where he used an APD cruiser.
• Another four-hour job as an officer at METRO RTA, typically from 7 p.m. to midnight.
• Another four-hour shift as an officer at Timber Top apartments, typically 11 p.m. to 3 a.m.

That left just a few early-morning hours off before returning to the APD headquarters to start another work day.

‘You’ve gotta keep these Akron businesses happy’

In the 2024 internal affairs interview, Farrar appeared incredulous that he was under investigation again following the 2018 probe into cash payments at higher rates than allowed. “I just feel like this whole thing is, like, you know, like, it’s a fishing expedition,” he said.

Farrar saw no issues with higher rates if companies could pay them. He said officers wouldn’t take the jobs otherwise, as he justified his rates and scheduling fees at House Three Thirty, among the other companies he was asked about.

“I said, listen, this is fucking LeBron James, this is the House Three Thirty,” Farrar said, recounting a conversation with then-Chief Steve Mylett, who he said gave him blanket verbal permission to charge more. Mylett told investigators that permission was for one shift.

“I mean this is like Amazon. This is like FirstEnergy. This is like — these are big businesses in Akron wanting a service from the Akron Police Department, not Summit County or not private security. Chief, can I fill this? I mean, you know, Amazon is, like, a multi-million dollar employer and, you know, like, you’ve gotta keep these Akron businesses happy.”

When Farrar got word of the findings in the internal affairs investigation that uncovered his widespread overbilling, records show a coordinated letter-writing campaign from some of the companies that internal affairs had been asking about. In letters and emails to Chief Brian Harding in March 2024, his contacts at those businesses wrote glowing reviews of Farrar — they were happy with his work, happy with the officers he sent them and had no issues with the price.

But not all businesses accepted the terms.

Records show that in 2023, when Farrar tried to absorb a North Hill bank into his scheduling portfolio from an officer who had been following the rules, he told the manager — who was paying the established $40-an-hour rate for APD security — that the hourly rate would be going up and the bank would have to start paying Farrar a cut, too (the previous APD scheduler didn’t take an hourly fee).

If the bank wouldn’t pay the higher rate and his fee, he wouldn’t have the incentive to fill open security shifts there, Farrar told the manager in an email that was included in an internal affairs investigation:

You don’t pay the scheduling fee if my officers don’t show up. This encourages me to keep the schedule filled and to ensure the officers are showing up to their assigned shifts.

Please let me know about the pay increase for the group as well. A lot of the officers are not working side jobs that pay $40/hour anymore when they can work side jobs that pay $50/hour. I am hoping that the pay increase incentivizes the officers to show up for their assigned shifts and to not go work other side jobs that pay more.

The manager balked. Another lieutenant learned of Farrar’s attempt to raise the rates at the bank, leading to a widespread internal affairs investigation in 2024 that found extensive policy violations. Farrar was suspended for a week. The 2025 criminal investigation documents said that Farrar raised his fees even higher after returning from his suspension and had not stopped charging more than the allowed hourly rates.

Secondary employment practices can be an ‘aorta of corruption’

A scathing U.S. Department of Justice investigation into widespread corruption inside the New Orleans Police Department in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina declared its secondary employment practices (referred to as “paid details”) an “aorta of corruption” that can undermine policing quality, divide loyalties based on who’s paying, contribute to significant officer fatigue and exacerbate inequitable policing.

Recent Akron Police Department practices are nearly identical to many of the practices that the DOJ decried in New Orleans 15 years ago.

The DOJ was sharply critical of:

• Cash payments from businesses to NOPD officers, a widespread practice in Akron.
• Officers working outside jobs. and coordinators scheduling jobs while claiming to be on the clock for the NOPD. Farrar consistently did both at the APD.
• Rates high enough for officers to incentivize outside work “over their regular police duties.”
• Secondary employment coordinators “who decide who works when, where, and for how much,” leading to “an inordinate amount of power.”
• Scheduling fees. The DOJ investigators “were told that some coordinating officers [in New Orleans] get paid an extra five hours a week or receive as much as $200 per week to coordinate” the jobs. According to a 2024 internal affairs investigation and 2025 criminal probe, Farrar was making more than that, even adjusted for inflation, coordinating House Three Thirty jobs alone.
• Dangerous fatigue from officers constantly on the clock. The criminal investigation showed days where the only hours Farrar was not claiming he was working were between 3 a.m. and 8 a.m.
• Inequitable policing: “Those with means in New Orleans are essentially able to buy additional protection,” the DOJ wrote.
• “An ambivalence towards effective accountability” in its secondary employment system.
• A paper-based record keeping system that “undermines effective oversight.”

The DOJ, in its 2011 report, said the NOPD should “immediately remake the Paid Detail system. In its place, create a single office that arranges, coordinates and monitors all officers’ outside law enforcement employment.”

That system, operated as a formal office with department control, should emphasize the outside work is a privilege, increase oversight, prohibit officers from soliciting outside jobs, establish stricter criteria on how those outside jobs are assigned, and set uniform pay rates with a fee that “goes to the City to cover the expenses of the outside employment office, workers compensation, fuel, use of equipment, and any other actual or potential costs to the City.”

Police chase leads to discovery of Farrar’s billing practices

Farrar, after nearly 30 years on the job, submitted his retirement papers in November of 2025, weeks after he initiated a police chase of a driver who ran a red light at an East Market Street intersection. Internal police department investigators who reviewed the chase declared Farrar acted appropriately under the APD’s pursuit policy.

But because Farrar wrote in his report he was driving in a cruiser to work a security job at Timber Top, investigators discovered, by happenstance, a pattern of Farrar taking APD cruisers for outside jobs without permission.

On Nov. 10, Harding sent Farrar a one-sentence order: “Effective immediately, you are hereby indefinitely banned from working and scheduling secondary employment.” The next day, records show internal investigators handed the case over to criminal investigators and Farrar submitted his retirement papers, citing his qualifications for the Ohio Police and Fireman’s Pension Fund.

On top of his six-figure salary, Farrar’s retirement triggered more than $232,702 in payouts for unclaimed paid time off — his human resources paperwork lists 3,986 hours of unused paid leave, 480 hours of compensatory time and 305 hours of unused sick leave. Unused sick leave — which would have netted him at least $14,000, according to his hourly rate — is only paid to city employees who retire.

In the following months, the criminal investigation found that Farrar had a habit of working outside jobs on APD time and that he had been charging three businesses higher hourly rates and scheduling fees than he was allowed to. (Criminal investigators were either unaware of how widespread Farrar’s rate scheme was or declined to look into it).

Those allegations were investigated by detectives as possible theft in office and theft by deception charges and forwarded to the City of Akron Department of Law, which is also responsible for defending the city’s police officers from lawsuits and choosing how criminal cases brought to it by APD are prosecuted, among other roles. That places its attorneys in conflict with evaluating whether an Akron police officer should be prosecuted, especially when what could be revealed in a criminal case could be used against the city in potential civil litigation.

Records show that the same day Farrar’s retirement with the APD became official, Nov. 14, he was hired as a special deputy with the Summit County Sheriff’s Office, an agency that Farrar had often competed with for outside jobs. In internal affairs interviews and in written reports, Farrar said he was long envious that the sheriff’s office had higher set rates.

Records show Farrar was fired a week later – Signal Akron obtained a copy of Farrar’s sheriff’s department appointment letter with “RESCINDED” stamped on it in big red letters.

No firing, no felony, no contest

City prosecutors reached a deal with Farrar in April to keep the case in municipal court, avoiding serious criminal charges.

Farrar’s deal came with no jail time or probation, just a restitution check to the city for $12,421.31. The city said that figure represents the amount companies should have paid the department when Farrar used cruisers for outside jobs in 2025, combined with the pay for the hours Farrar said he was working for the city when he was on the clock elsewhere.

In response to interview requests for the key city employees and a detailed list of questions in April, the mayor’s office, which oversees both the prosecutors and the police department, responded with a short statement: 

“During the course of their investigation detectives contacted various outside agencies and organizations that were involved in this matter, none of which were willing to pursue charges. The parties reached a resolution on this matter, which included a guilty plea, a guarantee of restitution for the city, and avoiding the uncertainty of protracted criminal litigation.”

The statement from the mayor’s office was incorrect: Farrar pleaded no contest in the municipal court, which means he did not admit guilt. Nor did detectives contact the vast majority of the businesses that paid more than they should have.

The city’s spokesperson, in a second statement sent May 28 after Signal Akron resent the detailed list of questions that went unanswered in April, said the totality of Farrar’s scheme was difficult for them to investigate.

“Former Lt. Farrar seemingly operated a sophisticated, multi-layer, scheme that very closely skirted the line of what was within policy and the law, making a fuller criminal indictment very difficult. While we understand your concerns about holding him fully accountable, we want to reiterate that our investigation and prosecution ensured there is now public record and documentation of Farrar’s dealings, he is no longer an Akron police officer representing the city, he can no longer take advantage of business owners while representing the Akron Police Department or the City of Akron, he was criminally convicted for his behavior, and the City was able to get some restitution for Farrar’s violations.”

Akron Mayor Shammas Malik’s office declined Signal Akron’s request to speak with:

• Chief of Public Safety Craig Morgan, who was the city’s chief prosecutor during Farrar’s criminal investigation.
• Senior Police Legal Adviser Laci Volcheck, the city attorney who signed off on the plea deal.
• Harding, who oversaw both criminal and administrative investigations into Farrar.
• Whitmire, who led the criminal probe.
• Lt. Patrick Neumann, who led the internal affairs investigations.
• Malik, who oversees the law and police departments.

The mayor’s office did not address:

• If the city reimbursed the businesses that Farrar overcharged, or if the city made them aware that they were overcharged.
• Why Farrar was allowed to retire after the discovery of so many policy violations in previous years.
• Why the criminal investigation, which in its small scope found crimes that reached far above the threshold for felony charges, was not referred to county prosecutors for potential prosecution. 
• Why the basic police report connected to Farrar’s criminal charge was not in the APD’s internal systems until 11 days after his conviction, long after Signal Akron requested it.
• If a civilian would have received similar prosecutorial decisions for swindling the same amount of money from the city.