Policing is a 24 hour job, I am the first to acknowledge that. Most of us (except those that take some of those comfortable 9-5 posts*) understand that to provide round the clock public safety and crime fighting we need to work the same hours as the baddies – ie all of them.
To cater for falling budgets and officer numbers, alternative shift patterns have been implemented over the last year or two to reduce the need to cover gaps with officers working expensive double bubble duties….oops….I meant one and a half bubble duties. These eight-hour shifts removed all the overlaps that used to give a buffer at the end of the working day and resulted in five teams running back-to-back day, late and night shifts on a six-on / three-off basis
This is not a popular move. Unless you are the time and motion or logistics company that recommended it based on the results of an ‘extensive study’ and then charged a healthy fee for the privilege.
It’s not popular with the officers, their families and the additional victims of crime that the pattern potentially creates. Doctors surgeries, on the other hand, are seeing an increase in patient safety as queues of broken coppers fill their waiting rooms.
When shift pattern changes are announced there are always waves of discontent throughout the shifts. The bosses usually react to these murmurings with threats of the old regulation shift pattern, complete with a week of night shifts and the dreaded late-to-day-shift quick swing. This pattern is the ace in the hole of the top brass as they know that none of the troops want to go anywhere near it and can therefore be forced into a corner with no option but to choose whatever else is on offer to avoid it.
Eight hour shifts which allow the loss of a rest day every nine days may mean that officers are at work more days each week may seem positive from a public perspective but this is a huge false economy. To avoid overtime the whole shift need to come into the station or otherwise take themselves out of the loop to ensure that everything is dotted and crossed before they go home. During this time – perhaps an hour or so every shift, no policing occurs, no criminals get caught, no intelligence gets obtained.
There is….simply….no one.
At least with an overlap of an hour or two there was a constant presence on the streets of the city as the incoming shift took over the call-signs while the outgoing shift sorted their lives out.
Alternatives such as twelve-hour shifts of four-on / four-off are, on the same basis, disregarded by the bosses as all they can see it that each officer is only on duty for 50% of the time. I love the twelve-hour pattern as, from an investigation and victim focus point of view, it offers so much and every officer that I have ever spoken to that has worked it has loved it too. Day shifts allow time to speak to those at work and those who need to be seen when they get home. Night shifts allow three or four hours of ‘useful’ time for seeing people before the night rolls on and the usual night-time business calls. Nights on an eight-hour shift offer no chance to see people. This actually reduces contact time to 44% of shifts – a further reduction of 6% over the twelves.
Unfortunately, even when the sickness figures start to rise and the morale starts to fall, those at the top of the tree will ritually refuse to acknowledge that the decisions made over the last year or so might have been wrong. Federation involvement inevitably follows but once again out comes the Reg 7′s ace to squash any valid argument presented by the reps.
Good luck to those fighting that fight at the moment. You never know, they might listen to you this time…
*The jobs in question I refer to are not those that involve some degree of actual ‘Policing’. They are those occupied by corporate wannabes who leave their power of arrest at the door and attempt to spend as many years as possible hiding from the public, fighting crime by email and taking their lunch without interruption week after week after week….
We all know who they are…
