Community Needs Outrank Some Officers’ Preferences

As of Saturday, the Los Angeles Police Department will end its experiment with compressed work schedules. This comes after an exhaustive review of the different work schedules and their effectiveness in providing the best law enforcement service to Angelenos. The schedules ranged from 3-12, in which officers work 12 hours a day for three days of the week, to the traditional 5-40, with others in between.

It is not true that department officials took the position that compressed schedules could not work. Nearly any schedule can be made to work. The question that the pilot program was intended to answer was whether compressed scheduling best serves the needs and concerns of our communities.

Compressed schedules go against the very core of community policing, which seeks to build a close working relationship with members of the community and to enhance internal communications related to the community’s needs. Officers in a compressed schedule are deployed fewer work days in the field and are naturally less familiar with the community. We have made too much progress to take a step backward in our community policing efforts now.

It is clear, too, that the compressed schedule does not provide the department with the level of flexibility needed to deploy officers in response to changing community concerns, recurring problems and unusual occurrences. For example, how does the department deploy people to handle the heavy workload during the late evening hours without having too many people working during, after or before this high demand peak?

We looked at various ways to address the problems created by a 12-hour scheduling system, but each solution created new problems.

Additionally, we have been unable to find a way to address the reduction in the number of response units. Currently, when an officer calls in sick, takes emergency time off, is placed off duty due to an injury or makes an arrest that will keep him out of the field for the rest of the shift, the longest the community and the division would have to cope with being a car short is eight hours. Under compressed schedules, this shortage is for 12 hours.

I realize that some officers would prefer the three-day work week, and their morale is certainly an important consideration. But it cannot be the sole consideration. Morale, positive or negative, is not totally dependent on compressed schedules. In my judgment, morale is the end result of good leadership, management, training and a work environment that allows everyone to realize their self-worth while providing the highest level of public service. And while morale will continue to be one of the factors considered when such decisions are made, it must be balanced against our obligation to provide the best possible service to the people of Los Angeles.

For these reasons, the department has determined that the compressed schedule is not in the best interests of the department, the city or its communities. Both the Board of Police Commissioners and the city’s Executive Employee Relations Committee agree with the decision.

It has come to my attention that the Los Angeles Police Protective League is organizing a job action over this issue. I hope this does not occur. I truly believe that a significant majority of the men and women of the LAPD understand why it is necessary to put service to our communities above self-interest. If the league and a small minority of officers participate in this activity, it has the potential of hurting public safety and the image of the city, slowing the momentum of positive change within the department, casting a cloud on the integrity of department personnel and reducing the LAPD’s stature within law enforcement and within the communities we serve. I hope the league’s board will reevaluate its stated position, put politics aside and not move forward on such a foolish journey.

If a job action does occur, the community and government officials should send a clear message of disapproval to the league’s board.