Police Commissioners OK Shorter Workweek

Hoping to stop an exodus of officers from the Los Angeles Police Department, the city’s Police Commission voted Tuesday to approve Mayor James K. Hahn’s plan to allow many officers to work compressed schedules of 12 or 10 hours a day, three or four days a week.

The plan, which faces some opposition by the City Council, was approved subject to details about deployment and other issues that will be hashed out in the next 30 days. That work will be done by a special committee including two commissioners and representatives of the police chief and mayor.

Commission President Rick Caruso said he is hopeful the new schedule can be implemented in the Central and Hollywood divisions on Oct. 20, as proposed by Hahn, before being rolled out to the rest of the department during the following 15 months.

“We have studied this pretty aggressively. It was [tried] a number of years ago and we found no major problems with it,” Caruso said. “But it does need to be implemented in a prudent and thoughtful way.”

Critics of the idea have long accepted that it might help boost police morale, but warn that it could raise public safety concerns. The same LAPD test cited by Caruso has also been brought up by those who oppose the flexible work schedule. In their view, the schedule complicated supervision and created other problems in the divisions that tried it.

Hahn disputes that characterization, and on Tuesday he told the board, whose members he appointed, that he believes the compressed work schedule will improve public safety by helping the LAPD more effectively recruit and retain officers, and by putting more officers on the street during high-crime time periods through overlapping shifts.

“I’m very pleased the Police Commission decided to move forward with the flexible work schedule,” Hahn told reporters after the vote. “It’s important for me to stem the tide of officers leaving the LAPD for other departments.”

With fewer than 9,000 officers on the job, the LAPD has fallen 1,000 officers below its peak strength and is losing 50 officers a month. Some officers have said low morale and the lack of a compressed work schedule were factors in their departure.

Under Hahn’s plan, some patrol officers at each station would be assigned to 12-hour shifts three days a week, while others would work 10-hour days, four days a week. Still others would work a regular eight hours.

“This is a total victory for the enhancement of public safety in Los Angeles,” said police union President Mitzi Grasso, who joined Hahn at the post-vote news conference.

The union endorsed Hahn for mayor this year after he agreed to support a compressed work schedule, which has been sought by the union for years.

Chief’s Report Not Given to Commission

The Police Commission vote was 4 to 1, with Commissioner Bert Boeckmann saying he might be able to support the plan but objecting that a report by Police Chief Bernard Parks on potential problems had not been provided to him by Caruso.

Caruso said he and Commissioner Rose Ochi, as members of the special committee that is still working out the plan’s details, have seen the chief’s report but want to develop solutions to what he said were a “handful” of problems before coming back to the full commission for consideration in the next 30 days.

Questions raised by the chief include how the department should select officers for the work schedules, how the city payroll system needs to be adjusted to accommodate the changed workweeks, and how police stations can supply officers with equipment if they are working a variety of overlapping shifts, Caruso said.

“Every issue had a solution,” Caruso said, adding that stations have enough equipment to handle the change and the payroll system can be adjusted.

Caruso declined to make a copy of the chief’s report public, saying it is a working document.

Parks, who originally opposed the compressed work schedule but said in June he would implement it at Hahn’s request, was equally vague Tuesday when asked by Boeckmann about his response to the plan.

“There are a number of issues, policy issues, that the commission has to resolve as we walk through it,” Parks told Boeckmann. The chief said the issues include assignment and deployment of officers with shifts of differing lengths.

Hahn is hopeful he can win City Council approval of the plan, but some members continued Tuesday to urge a delay in its implementation until Nov. 10, when a consultant hired by the council will complete a report on the issue.

“It is a mistake to rush into a matter of this significance,” said Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas, who said the council should take as long as it needs to find answers to many questions about the plan.

Council members have voiced concern that officers may be fatigued by working 12-hour shifts. In addition, some have questioned Hahn’s timing, asking whether it is wise to shuffle the LAPD’s schedules even as the nation reels from the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But Councilman Dennis Zine, a former police union director, told the commission that it is right to move ahead with the plan.