Short-shifting L.A.

Unlike those in other large police departments across the country, most patrol officers in Los Angeles work just three 12-hour days a week. The sweetness of this schedule cannot be underestimated, and it is wildly popular with the rank and file. Officers have more time to recharge and recover from their physically and emotionally taxing work. They have more time for their families. They have more time for second jobs. They rack up more overtime pay, and the handful who reside out of state have more time to jet between work and their homes in Idaho and Las Vegas.

The so-called 3/12 schedule also provides one major benefit -- just one -- to the entire department: It’s a terrific recruiting tool. Many smaller departments in the area trumpet it as a reason to sign on: The “3/12 work schedule means approximately 208 . . . days off per year,” advertises the Inglewood Police Department. By contrast, most employees putting in standard 40-hour weeks have 137 days off. Police Chief William J. Bratton, who neither supports nor opposes the schedule, allows that it has enabled the LAPD to better compete for police candidates.

So it’s good for officers and good enough for the chief, but that leaves out one other group. The residents of Los Angeles are being cheated by this police perk.

Because of the short workweek, the city has paid millions in overtime that it otherwise wouldn’t have. It also has fewer cops patrolling the streets than if they worked a four-day week, as is far more standard for large urban police departments. Last fall, a city study found that response times are longer, and certain neighborhoods have so small a patrol presence that they could be designated police-free zones. Now, in an excruciatingly tight budget year, the city is projecting a $16-million deficit for the department, a chunk of which is overtime the city must pay officers when they’re on call to appear in court on their days off.

Officers counter that crime in Los Angeles is down by double digits, and that alone should prove the policy’s effectiveness. It doesn’t. We accept Bratton’s conclusion that a significant portion of the decline is the result of police action, but the 3/12 schedule takes officers off the street. That works against crime reduction, not for it.

The Honolulu Police Department, which instituted the three-day week in 2000, reverted to a five-day week last year after determining that the abbreviated schedule resulted in exhausted officers, poor continuity of criminal investigations and weaker community relations. Crime dropped by 9% last year, and Honolulu remains the safest major city in the country.

If this subject weren’t such political dynamite, 3/12 already would have been done away with here as well. Bratton won’t say it, so we will: Abolish 3/12.