GARDEN GROVE : Order Extended on Police Work Hours

A Superior Court judge Wednesday extended a preliminary injunction sought by the Anaheim Police Assn., which prevents the city from changing officers’ work schedules.

But Judge Francisco J. Firmat also required the police to post a $5,000 bond. Requiring a bond for a temporary injunction is a routine way to limit such requests, but the officers still are “not pleased,” said Seth J. Kelsey, an attorney for the police group.

The officers will probably decide by Monday whether to post the bond. Posting it would require a majority vote by the group, which has about 300 members.

If the association does not post the bond, the 60-day extension will not take effect, leaving the door open for the city to impose shift schedule changes.

The officers first sought the injunction last month, when the city wanted to change shift times to better respond to growing after-school gang activity.

The three shifts at the station begin at 6 a.m., 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. The city wants to move each of those times back one hour, in hope that the change will mean better staffing during after-school hours.

“That’s one of the problems they’re trying to address,” said Lou Ann Merritt-McLean of the city attorney’s office about afternoon gang incidents.

She said the changes would result in better staffing after school, but officers said that the real need is to hire more officers and that the shift change will not improve the situation.

Officers said that the city cannot change schedules until this contract expires in July, 1992, and that a sudden change in work schedules would be a hardship on personal schedules, such as commute and day-care arrangements.

The work schedules for officers have not changed in 28 years. The proposed change would not affect lieutenants and captains, who are management and have a different contract.

The judge ordered the two sides to hold a conference call with him Tuesday to discuss the talks.