Police Work Schedules Get the Spotlight

When the Los Angeles Police Protective League recently paused to assess the reasons for the Police Department’s plummeting morale, the Rampart corruption scandal did not warrant a mention.

“The plunge into the abyss,” according to the current issue of the union’s newspaper, began with the 1997 decision by Police Chief Bernard C. Parks to scrap a compressed work schedule that allowed some officers to work three 12-hour shifts per week rather than five eight-hour days.

For four years, union leaders have made it a top priority to resurrect the so-called 3-12 schedule. Now, their relentless focus on the subject is registering some political gain.

Both candidates for mayor support a shorter workweek, though they sharply disagree over whether it should be a three- or four-day schedule. That dispute has turned the union’s pet issue into a major campaign debate.

City Atty. James K. Hahn supports the 3-12 plan, saying it would boost morale, help attract new recruits and stem the flow of officers leaving the Los Angeles Police Department for other agencies. Former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa favors a four-day, 10-hour schedule, saying the 3-12 plan undermines community policing, is fraught with administrative problems and jeopardizes public safety.

Others have raised different criticisms of the shortened week, arguing that it exacerbates the distance that some say exists between LAPD officers and the public they serve. With the 3-12 schedule, officers, most of whom do not live in the city, would spend more days outside Los Angeles than inside.

In part because of his support of 3-12, Hahn won the union’s mayoral endorsement.

Over the years, there have been conflicting studies, charges and countercharges about the merits of a three-day schedule. About the only thing everyone can agree on is that cops love it.

Mixed Results From Pilot Study

In 1995, the LAPD launched a pilot program in several police divisions to assess the potential benefits of the 3-12 schedule for patrol officers and 4-10 plan for detectives. The findings were mixed. According to a 1996 report on the program, the shorter workweeks were good for morale, resulted in less overtime and sick time and a projected savings of millions of taxpayer dollars. The schedule, proponents said, also helped keep experienced officers working in patrol.

But the schedules, particularly the 3-12, also raised concerns about officer fatigue and communication breakdowns among the different police units. It also posed scheduling problems for officers who needed to testify in court.

A year later, the LAPD released a “briefing paper” which also gave compressed work schedules mixed reviews, but noted that neither 3-12 nor the 4-10 plan offered police managers the deployment and scheduling flexibility that the traditional five-day workweeks did.

The Rampart station participated in the pilot program. In the LAPD’s Board of Inquiry report on the corruption scandal, police officials criticized the compressed workweek for contributing to a leadership vacuum. The report said the best officers were attracted to the 3-12 patrol shifts, leaving untested sergeants and inexperienced young officers to fill specialized units, such as CRASH, which were exempted from the compressed work schedules.

Representatives from several local police departments that have the 3-12 schedules say they have been successful, but acknowledge that it might not work for every agency.

“They work well for us and an agency our size,” said Palos Verdes Estates Police Chief Timm Browne, whose department has 24 officers and was the first agency in Southern California to adopt 3-12 in 1982. “Perhaps on a greater scale you might have logistical problems or the scheduling might become burdensome, especially with the court considerations of having officers testify.”

The Beverly Hills Police Department implemented the 3-12 work schedule for patrol officers in 1993, Lt. Edward Kreins said.

“It’s working fine for us,” Kreins said. “You have to overcome a few obstacles that you may not have with [a traditional schedule] . . . you have to work harder, but we’ve not seen any loss of service to the community.”

Kreins said the biggest benefit of the 3-12 was increased officer morale. He added that his department has attracted a number of LAPD officers in recent years, in part because the Beverly Hills department offers the more flexible schedule.

“If you’re looking to recruit the best police officers in the country--and I feel we have the best--then this is the sort of thing you need to look at. You get what you pay for.”

Staff Morale Is Key Consideration

Many academicians and police experts, however, say it is poor public policy to implement 3-12 schedules.

“Do you really want an officer in the twelfth hour of his third shift making life and death decisions?” asked USC Professor Erwin Chemerinsky, who studied the merits of compressed work schedules as part of an overall critique of the LAPD last year.

Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation, a nonprofit research group in Washington, said he also has serious reservations about the merits of 3-12 schedules.

“The agencies that have gotten these schedules have usually gotten them because of demands from the police unions rather than an analysis of the impact on the police performance,” Williams said.

He said the fatigue factor should not be ignored.

“I don’t know if someone working in these shifts, who is always on the edge of dealing with some tragedy or crisis, is as capable or alert as he should be after 12 hours,” Williams said.

Even as experts debate the plan’s merits, the campaigns continue to squabble over it and other law enforcement ideas.

On Wednesday, Hahn’s campaign began running a 15-second television ad questioning Villaraigosa’s credibility, partly based on the 3-12 debate. The commercial says the Los Angeles police union called a Villaraigosa ad about the danger of a three-day workweek for police officers “false” and says his transportation plan would take “police off the streets.”

“You can’t trust Antonio Villaraigosa,” a male narrator says over a grainy black and white photo of the former legislator.

Villaraigosa’s plan would replace LAPD officers and sheriff’s deputies who work on MTA buses and Metro Rail trains with less-expensive enforcement officers who would issue tickets to those who do not pay the fare. According to his campaign, that would not result in taking any officers off the streets.