New 10 Days On, 5 Days Off Schedule Has a Beat Escondido Police Like

The Beatles once sang a song titled, “Eight Days a Week,” and if that sounds incongruous, consider the fact that most Escondido police officers are working a 10-day workweek.

It is a scheduling philosophy that is raising curious eyebrows around the state but which is seen in Escondido as the best way yet to schedule most beat cops.

The schedule, which began earlier this month, calls for the patrol officers who work the afternoon-evening “swing” shift and the late night-early morning “graveyard” shift to work 10 consecutive nine-hour-days, then to have five days off before returning for another 10 days of straight duty.

State officials say Escondido’s arrangement is unique in California, if not the nation.

“Oh, really?” said a member of the state’s advisory board on police management, when told of the work schedule.

“Oh, yeah?” responded the San Diego Police Department.

“You’re kidding,” said a sergeant with Los Angeles Police Department.

“Gee, that’s interesting,” was the reaction from the Oceanside Police Department.

But Escondido police, from the rank-and-file patrol officers to department management, say they have struck upon what they consider the best way, at least for their city, to schedule patrol officers.

Rave Reviews

The few disadvantages of working 10 days in a row are far outweighed by the advantages, said Capt. Mike Stein, who was one of a handful of higher-ranking patrol supervisors who tried the shift on an experimental basis for four years and gave it rave reviews.

With the Escondido City Council’s blessing, the schedule was adopted for a year’s trial basis, and newcomers to the schedule say they’re delighted with it.

“Working 10 days in a row isn’t as hard as it sounds, and having five days off is great,” said patrol officer Bill Wolfe, who until earlier this month had worked a more conventional workweek of five days on, two days off.

“When we came back to work after the first five days off, the guys were feeling incredibly high. They all had great attitudes, like they just finished vacation.”

The plan allows the same 11 patrol officers and their sergeant and lieutenant to work the exact same hours (swing or graveyard) on the same days, and then to take the same days off.

On days 11 through 15 of the shift, a relief team will work the hours of the team having its days off; that same relief team will then fill in for the other shift on its five days off, thereby completing its own 10-day tour of duty.

The patrol officers on the day shift are not part of the 10-5 schedule, as it is called, because arithmetically the 10-5 schedule only works with three teams. The day crew follows the traditional five days on, two days off.

Advantages of System

Among the advantages cited by the department for the 10-5 schedule are:

- Since the shifts work as a single team, with the same working hours and same days on and off, they build camaraderie and a greater sense of cohesiveness as they grow accustomed to working with one another day in, day out.

- At some time or another during the year, all officers, seniority notwithstanding, will have weekends off. Previously, it was not uncommon for senior officers to request weekends off, and lesser-seniority patrol officers to be stuck with midweek days off.

- Since the men are working nine-hour days, there is some overlap between shifts, so there are always patrol officers in the field.

- A 10-day vacation can be expanded to 20 days by sandwiching it between five-day weekends.

- Even if an officer has to make a court appearance or take training on one of the five scheduled days off, he will still have more off-duty time than under the former work schedule.

“On the five-day schedule, it wasn’t unusual for us to be called in on our days off, either for training purposes or because we were subpoenaed to be in court,” noted Lt. Ron Lepanto, who commands the swing shift.

“So we might still have ended up working a five-day week, then a day or two in court or training, and another five-day regular workweek. So you’d be looking at 11 or 12 days without a weekend--and then only get two days off still--if you weren’t called back into court again on your next day off.

“Under this arrangement, you can be pretty sure that after 10 days you’ll at least get three or four days off in a row, and for most of the guys, that’s better than what they’ve been getting.”

Another Popular Schedule

There are no standard patrol work schedules in California, although the traditional five days on, two days off remains the most common, according to Mike DiMiceli, chief of the management counseling services bureau for the state’s Commission on Peace Officers Standards and Training.

The second-most popular scheduling routine is the 4-day, 10-hour-a-day workweek, he said. That system is used by patrol officers in the San Diego Police Department, among others, and is growing in preference because of its most significant benefit--the three-day weekend.

No other department to his knowledge has adopted the plan now used by Escondido, DiMiceli said.

Some departments in California work their patrol officers as long as 12 hours a day, four days a week--in which case the officers receive bonus days off during the month to make up for working longer than 40 hours a week. In departments where officers work three 12-hour days, at some point in the month they put in extra days to compensate for the time they owe the department.

“It is uncertain whether working longer hours makes you less or more efficient,” DiMiceli said. “What is most critical is how you use the length of the shift to adjust your staffing to meet the peaks and valleys of the workload.”

DiMiceli said he would not react to the pros and cons of Escondido’s scheduling since he had not previously heard of it and had not been formally asked by the department for his reaction. “But if the Police Department in Escondido likes it and the City Council down there likes it, who am I to criticize it?”

But police in other departments said they believed Escondido’s plan was too inflexible because it put the same number of men on the street every day of the week, even though some days might predictably have more calls--Friday nights, for instance--than other days, such as Monday or Tuesday.

Escondido police said fluctuations in police calls are so minimal in Escondido that it is not a significant scheduling concern.

‘Clear Headed’

Are officers frazzled by the end of 10 days of patrol duty? No, said Escondido’s Wolfe, who on Friday was finishing his 10th straight day of duty.

“I just came out of briefing, and everyone in there was clear-headed and in a good mood,” he said. And the benefits of working 10 days straight will show positively in the field, he predicted.

“I think you’ll see an increase in the workload by individual officers, because morale is better and there’s a greater sense of cohesion and working together, since we’re all out there together, every day,” Wolf said.

Norm Stamper, deputy chief of the San Diego Police Department, said he was unaware of Escondido’s unique schedule. His department opted for the 4-day, 10-hour work schedule last July as a result of a wide-ranging study on police officer safety in the wake of the Sagon Penn shooting.

Among the 119 recommendations made by the task force on officer safety was the four-day workweek. “The argument was that by allowing officers to work a 10-hour day and take three days off a week, he’d get away from the pressures of the job which, as a result, would enhance his personal safety on the job,” Stamper said.

“Many of us in administration were of the opinion that the safety benefits were arguable, but the morale benefit was obvious. So we decided to go to the four-day week because there would be nothing lost and maybe something gained by it.”

Another advantage of the four-day workweek for police, Stamper said, was that it gave the department greater flexibility in assigning patrolmen to the busiest beats at the busiest times.

Beats Change

But a drawback, he added, is that officers were moved from one geographic beat to another to accommodate scheduling problems created by working four days out of seven.

“So any notion of ‘beat accountability’ is destroyed,” Stamper said. “We have a theory of community-oriented police work where the officer is left out there long enough to know the people and the problems and to develop a sense of identification within the community. He would understand trends and patterns in his community and theoretically be able to provide better police protection.

“But since we now have to move police officers from one beat to another (to accommodate scheduling mechanics), the notion of ‘beat accountability’ is damaged,” Stamper said. “With any schedule, there are trade-offs and payoffs. It’s a balancing act. Maybe we’ll look at what Escondido is doing.”

The Oceanside Police Department operates two different kinds of scheduling routines: The canine corps and the swing and graveyard shifts operate on 10-hour days, four-day weeks, while the day shift follows the traditional five-day, 40-hour workweek.

The mix of scheduling provides the department greater flexibility in staffing officers at peak hours, said patrol commander Mike Shirley.

Even more flexible is the scheduling used by the Los Angeles Police Department for its patrol officers: They must work 21 days out of every 28 days, and every month the officers put in their requests for what days they want to work during the next 28-day rotation, said LAPD Sgt. Art Madrid.

Patrol supervisors then juggle the requests for days off and on with their staffing needs, he said.

The officers work an eight-hour, 45-minute workday and occasionally--but not frequently--some officers have asked to work 10 consecutive days in order to take off more days at once.

“I’ve worked 10 days straight but, boy, that can get to you,” Madrid said.

POST’s DiMiceli said studies have shown that departments which have gone to longer workdays and three-day weekends have experienced an immediate decline in sick-day requests and increase in morale but that, after about a year, the amount of sick time requested returns to previous levels.