10 hour shift info needed

[johnny67]

I am a detective that works at a department where the patrol division works 12 hour shifts. The investigations division still works a traditional 5 day work week. Ever since our patrol division switched to 12's, it is very hard to get people to put in for detective openings. The guys on the road that are interested just are not willing to give up the extra days off that they currently enjoy. To help close the gap on the days off issue, we are looking at having the investigations division go to a 4 day work week with 10 hour shifts. It is a very hard sell to the administration, so I could really use all the information on ten hour shifts that I can get, both pros and cons. I would also be interested to hear from officers whose current departments use 12 hour shifts for patrol. What hours do detectives work, and how does this affect response to new position openings in investigations? Any and all info would be helpful.


Stay safe.

[PhilipCal]

10 Hour Shift(s)

Johnny,

I'm looking at a master off day schedule for calendar 2005, with a four day, ten hour schedule. Highway Patrol Division of the Alabama Dept of Public Safety is currently utilizing it, and my Division is prepped to go to it in January. The least amount of days you get off at the end of your four day tour is three. Depending on the calendar, and the rotation, you will also recieve quite a few four day breaks. That could be a selling point for getting guys to apply to for transfer to Investigations.

[Dannyc188]

I work for a fairly large department where patrol works 4-10's and the investigations units work 5-8's with on calls with the exception of the homicide unit.
4-10's are excellent, our department is broken down into 3 main sections, north, south and central with each section broken down into 4-5 subsections. recently patrol switched to all of patrol units having either wed, thur and fri (WTF)off for the officers with less time on, or sat, sun and mon (SSM)off for the vets. on all three shifts. the only con to this is that on tues. which is the overlap day each area is greatly overstaffed. most areas have taken this day to work proactive and undercover jobs to overcome this.
One of the pro's is that this way even the first year rookie gets a piece of the weekend off with WTF. another is that with 4-10's you always have the same days off and officers can schedule steady off duty jobs wich they work every week.

[eyerish101]

we work 4 10 s with 3 off .every one gets a piece of the weekend .eather off thur fri sat or sun mon tues

[55Johnny]

our department is using the traditional 5 on 3 off schedule. We are in contract negotiations now and a lot of guys want the 4 on 3 off schedule. Only one problem, we need something in writting to present our case to those officers that are happy with the 5/2. Can anyone help with pointing me in the right direction?

[L-1]

Johnny 67

Assuming your detective bureau primarily works Monday through Friday 0800 to 1700, you are going to have a lot of difficulty getting management support. In such cases, the only benefit of the 4/10 plan is to the workers, while Detective bureau staffing will effectively be reduced by 20%. Putting in an extra two hours a day doesn't make up for the missed fifth day unless the courts, prosecutor, other government agencies and rest of the business world adopt the same four day week.

About 12 years ago an agency I worked for tried putting one of their Monday through Friday specialized units on 4/10. Half of the people wanted to take their third day off on Friday and the other half wanted Mondays. This dropped staffing by 50% on Mondays, when weekend cases needed to be filed with the prosecutor's office and follow-up investigations needed to start. This also dropped staffing by 50% on Fridays, the day on which we usually scrambled to get things caught up for the weekend.

To even out the reduction to bureau operations, management insisted that the third day off be rotated through out the week. While everyone had Saturday and Sunday off, one person's third day might be on Monday, another on Tuesday, another on Wednesday, etc. This evened out the staff reduction, but having days off split up like this caused morale to drop like a rock. In addition, at the end of eight hours, a few people started sneaking out the door anyway, leaving us even more understaffed. In one case a major search was started for a "missing" officer who dispatch hadn't been able to raise on the radio for quite a while. Seemed he was already at home having a beer while he still had an hour and a half to go on his shift.

If due to the lack of a 4/10 plan you have difficulty recruiting detectives, you will need to overcome it by offering other perks such as a detective bonus, take home cars, etc.