Now that my county has imposed more specific time-keeping requirements on non-exempt employees, my investigators have decided that they would like to become exempt employees. Sounds great to me. I think my Chief Investigator can easily meet the test for exemption under the FLSA. But can the other investigators? Rank-and-file police officers are non-exempt. But DA investigators are an entirely different type of peace officer. Does anyone else have exempt investigators? If so, I'd appreciate any thoughts on articulating that exemption to the satisfaction of the Department of Labor.

DOL lumps all kinds of peace officers and detectives (and others) together, so unless they are managerial/administrative you have an uphill battle.

See http://www.dol.gov/whd/overtim...first_responders.htm

Based on the DoL standards that classify those who do "investigations or inspections for violations of law; ... interviewing witnesses; ... preparing investigative reports" as non-exempt, that's how we classify our investigator.