4-Day Workweek Starts Friday : Police Face Longer--but Fewer--Patrols

When San Diego police officers show up for the first shift at 6:30 Friday morning, they will face 10 hours on the streets instead of the accustomed eight. But most of them are pleased with the prospect.

The shift to a four-day week from the previous five-day week affects about 800 patrol officers, agents, sergeants and traffic officers. Among the expected benefits of the scheduling change are improved officer morale, greater flexibility in scheduling and an additional 80 officers on the street during peak night hours.

“What the 4-10 plan will do is to allow us to concentrate our forces when we really need them--during the hours of 9 in the evening until 3 in the morning, when we’re receiving calls all the time,” Assistant Chief Robert Burgreen said. “We anticipate that response time during this period will drop significantly.”

The new schedule will also enable the department to put more officers on the streets during weekends and increase the number of two-officer patrol cars, according to Capt. David Hall of the Northern Division.

“For example, in many of the northern towns you see a big need for officers on Sunday afternoons when everyone is coming back from the beach; now we’ll have that flexibility,” he said.

The new schedule will be tried for two years, after which the department will decide whether to adopt it permanently, Burgreen said.

According to Burgreen, the four-day work week was only one among hundreds of suggestions advanced by an Officer Safety Task Force report issued in December. Although police officers had sought a four-day week for years, it was only after the safety report was issued that the plan gained favor with the city, he added.

Concerns about the cost of new equipment required to implement the plan and potential communication problems between upper-level and first-line supervisors fueled resistance to a four-day week in the past, Burgreen said.

“Although communication will be more difficult, we decided that other factors outweigh that drawback,” Burgreen said. “We’ve been studying this issue for months, and after consulting with several other departments that use this system, we decided that it was the most efficient way to make use of our manpower.”

While the new schedule will make do with the same number of officers, $450,000 for additional vehicles and communication equipment is required because officers will be unable to rotate patrol cars during the hours in which two shifts are out at once, Burgreen said. The funds are in the department’s budget, he added.

During the hours that fall outside the six-hour “double coverage” period, the number of officers on the street will decrease slightly, but there are far fewer calls during this time, Burgreen said. Currently, the overlap period is only one hour and there are many hours when there are more police than needed patrol, he said.

Efficient scheduling won’t be the only benefit of the four-day week.

“Put simply, the men are delighted,” said Police Officers Assn. President A.L. (Skip) DiCherchio. “For your average officer, a 10-hour day seems like no big deal, but an extra day with his family--that’s really nice.

“Attrition has always been a problem for patrolmen and if an officer looked around and saw that he could work in a neighboring department and have a four-day week . . . well, that might be enough to draw them. But with the new schedule, I might even anticipate some lateral transfers onto the city force,” DiCherchio said.

The new schedule was an issue in the latest round of negotiations between the police union and the city for the contract that was signed July 1.

While some officers may use the time to recover from the stress of police work and bolster their home life, Sgt. Jeff Fellows predicted that others may use the time “to open up some sort of little business on the side and make some extra money.”

Thirty departments in California and 25% of all police departments nationwide use the four-day week, Fellows said. The Los Angeles Police Department uses a five-day schedule.

In National City, which has been using the 4-10 schedule for about 10 years, the system has been an “unqualified success,” according to Capt. Wayne Fowler, operations division commander.

“For one thing, it allows us to guarantee the men that they will have their weekends to themselves a good percentage of the time. Also, the three days give officers on the graveyard shift a chance to return to normal sleeping patterns,” he said.

Very few officers in National City have taken to moonlighting as a result of the new schedule, Fowler said.

But in Chula Vista, which has also had a four-day week for about 10 years, the majority of the officers have taken part-time jobs during their off days, according to Police Agent Hal King.

While considering the new system, top San Diego officers toured the police departments of Sacramento and Phoenix, Burgreen said. “We presented them with a whole laundry list of questions and everyone from the police chief to the guys on the beat had only good things to say about it,” he said.

Among the hesitations that the department had was the effect of a 10-hour shift on the officers’ alertness--particularly during the grueling 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift. “But when you consider that most officers are already working overtime to file reports and check up on cases, a 10-hour day doesn’t sound too bad,” DiCherchio said.

With the new schedule, the 20 minutes of “lineup time,” during which officers are briefed before going on patrol, will be included in the scheduled hours. Previously, this period was unpaid for and was in addition to the eight-hour shift, DiCherchio said. Because of a recent court ruling, such time must now be compensated, he said.

Although grumblings among the officers are few, Fellows said that some officers on the evening shift have expressed concern that their social life will suffer.

“Now they’ll be out there until 3 in the morning, so by the time they get off all the bars will be closed,” he said. “But on the balance, I’d say everyone is pretty pleased.”

San Diego police experimented with a four-day week in the early 1970s but abandoned the program.