I’m watching NYPD Blue files, & something asymmetrical came up on hours. The main character cop normally does the day shift I guess which starts at 08:00, goes for 8 hours to 4:00PM (16:00). There’s an episode where he works another case on his own time during the day since he knew the victim, so to make up for it he keeps going & takes the next shift too - but he clearly and unmistakably tells his partner ‘because I wasn’t available today I’m taking a 4:00 - 01:00 [shift]’ - 9 hours. That’d leave the night shift possibly at 01:00 - 08:00 - 7 hours.
Tho it was a drama show it had a few real ex-cops as consultants to keep storylines realistic, and in fact the lead technical advisor was sorta famous Bill Clark. Ergo, they tried to make the workplace realistic (of course with some glaring overly-dramatic moments to entertain). But the shift schedule is weird; starting with the 1st one of the day, it’d be 7 hours, then 8 then 9. The other choice would be 2nd (day) shift start at 07:00 going for 9 hours, then 3rd starting at 16:00 also 9, finally starting over at the next day early shift at 01:00 for only 6 hours.
It would be logical if so many cops would just hate the 1st shift (‘graveyard’) so to grease the wheels they’d ask detectives for volunteers - then the # of shift hours in a precinct would be 6-9-9 or 7-8-9, and whoever has to work graveyard gets an advantage of working either 1 or 2 hours < if they worked 3rd shift, or OR 2 or 3 < if they worked 2nd (unclear if day shift starts at 07:00 or 08:00).
The show is NYC but ex-cops from anywhere, would this sound right that just because it’s hard to find detectives who want to work graveyard, police departments sweeten the deal by letting them work only 6 or 7 hours while the other 2 shifts would make up the difference? If true, when does the 2nd shift (day) start 07:00 or 08:00?
“In the NYPD, one day is divided into three 8-hour and 35-minute shifts: 11:15 PM to 7:50 AM (called a 12 to 8), 7:05 AM to 3:40 PM (called an 8 to 4) and 3:00 PM to 11:35 PM (called a 4 to 12). Officers work 5 of these shifts per week.”
From here: NYPD Profile - NYJobSource.com
Doesn’t quite explain the line in the show, though.
What? None of that makes sense. 1stoff, according to that a day got 25 & 1/2 hours. 2nd, obviously if cops are in the middle of something near the end of their shift they don’t look at their watches (cellphones, whatever), yell ‘quittin time!’ & stop what they’re doing. On a normal day dependent on shift workers, the shift starts on an hour (minute :00). 3rdly, the 1st shift has 45 minutes of overlap with the 2nd; 40 overlap minutes between 2nd & 3rd; 20 minutes between 3rd & the next day’s 1st.
Another point is the cars - each team of 2 partners doesn’t get its own car - each car is brought back to the precinct for shift change so the next partners can use it. If shift 2’s start time is 7:05 but shift 1’s car is gonna be out til 7:50, what are shift 2’s cops supposed to do for 45 minutes? Roll call & assorted pre-shift issues would be what, 10 minutes? Sure some cops will get foot patrol but a) not alone and b) why different overlap times between each shift?
It also says a cop will work 5 shifts per week, but unclear if they’re all the same shift or to stagger them. There’s no incentive to get anyone to volunteer for 1st shift (the one they call 12-8).
Not criticizing you, but even expecting any governmental entity to be offbeat & illogical, such scheduling looks ridiculous. I get the idea that they want some overlap to allow time for things taking longer to wrap up end of shift than expected, or getting caught in traffic, etc. - but maybe 10 minutes.
If any1 is familiar with this kind of shift scheduling, can you explain?
Also Bear_Nenno as you rightly point out, this doesn’t jibe with what would be called a 4:00 - 1:00; following the extra time logic, it’d go 15:00 - 12:35. The show’s main writer wasn’t a cop but with so many cops advising the show, specially the legendary Clark, why would the writer stick an extra hour into what they make Sipowitz say is a normal shift with an extra hour?
No, a day still has 24 hours . Each shift overlaps some with the one before and after. From 7:05 to 7:50, the 12-8 shift is on duty and so is the 8-4 shift. From 3:00-3:40, the 8-4 and 4-12 shifts are both on duty and from 11:15-11:35 both the 4-12 and the 12-8 shifts are on duty.
Police officers get paid for the time they spend donning and doffing their uniforms and protective gear ( sometimes called “washing up time”) The car isn’t out until 7:50 - the cops are being paid until 7:50. They bring the car back before 7:50 so they can change and the shift that comes in at 7:05 doesn’t get into the car until they change and have had roll-call.
I’m not sure what was going on with the 9 hour shift in NYPD Blue all those years ago - but I do know that currently there is a pilot program in NYPD for 10 or 12 hour shifts ( which will most likely be X hour plus Y minutes to allow for the overlap.) And it’s not inconceivable that even back then their might have been special shifts for parades and such.
A cop volunteering to do official business “on his own time” & altering his schedule on his own are made-for-TV things that wouldn’t happen in real life & are bigger issues than the exact shift times someone speaks.
Also, lemme guess, they’ve never not solved a case by the end of the episode & the bad guy always confesses to the crime, too. Right?
Nurse’s schedules do this as well.
mmm
I suggest pretty much everybody’s schedules do that regardless of occupation. If the employer needs 24h coverage doing the work, then any pre- and post- overhead or prep time has to happen while the other shifts are still doing the actual work.
Most folks in whichever biz would tend to speak of “their shift” as the hours of planned productivity, not the planned hours on premises.
I’m retired, but in my former biz we planned / plan 90 minutes per workday functionally and legally at work before / after the truly productive part. That 90 minutes was pure overhead. And another 30 - 45 minutes on top of that to get to/from between the actual work site versus fully off the premises.
So 2+ hours difference every single workday between what came out of our lives versus what actually benefitted the employer. Not including any commute time between worksite to/from home or other sleeping arrangements.
I worked 10 jobs going thru school (not all at once); since joining the regular workforce, I’ve been fulltime, contracted & indy projects. There were expected times but nothing important or necessary as cops, EMS, fire, etc. & every1 was responsible for themselves but it wasn’t shift-driven. I knew cops had shifts since they were needed 24/7 but this kind of overlap didn’t occur to me, & 1st time I watched the episode I just figured it’d go like I thought, that they had to entice graveyard shift guys with shorter hours to get volunteers, tack on the slack to the other shifts. This is illuminating, the practice of big overlaps between shifts - I learned something. Still it doesn’t explain why the NYPD Blue precinct would have the weird 9-hour shift (& he definitely says ‘4:00-1:00’), but the explanations above clear up most of my original confusion; very cool, guys. 
there were a couple of memorable cases where they didn’t stop the bad guy in time, another couple the perp didn’t fess up & the detectives’s heads were spinning cause they couldn’t unravel who did what, even a couple the bad guy got away with it. But generally you got it.
For a book series like this: Ed McBain’s 87th precinct. He wasn’t a cop but interviewed many & the way he wrote is how people think, for cops, perps, victims, witnesses, etc…
I will stipulate that this might be the case somewhere if you can give me a cite as to exactly where. I know of no agency, at least in my locale, that pays for officers to get dressed/undressed. You get suited up either at home or in the locker room on your own time and are expected to be ready to hit the bricks at the time your shift begins. Roll call isn’t a mandatory thing and many times it’s done online or over the data unit in a squad.
There would be all kinds of problems with this. Even those that are paid on salary (Lieutenant and above here) have to fill out matrix sheets as far as when they worked and how they spent their time. Detectives don’t have free rein to work whenever they want. Their case load and times are monitored.
I am a Lead Officer which is the equivalent of a Corporal. If I stay over to finish a report, even for just 5 minutes it has to be approved by a higher ranking officer. If the union found out they let us volunteer our time there would be a commotion. There are only a handful of times we can volunteer, such as during the “shop-with-a-cop” promotion.
In this letter, the first paragraph refers to “washing up and debriefing”
[This] (https://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/18/opinion/l-new-york-city-police-richly-deserve-a-shorter-workweek-807559.html) is kind of old, but there’s no way they gave that up in a contract.
I saw somewhere earlier that suggested that the extra time accumulates as a form of comp time but I can’t find it now. ( I think it was called “chart time” and wonder if that’s what the “lost time” they were talking about on NYPD blue refers to. )
Cop shift work was a subject I’ve brought up before in CS. Probably in the things that don’t happen in real life thread. One thing that is often shown is a cop working all hours day and night to work on a case. As PK mentions above all overtime must be approved and no one works for free. In my experience a small percentage of officers try to maneuver to get overtime but most are tired and just want to go home at the end of the shift.
We ran three shifts. In the morning midnights was walking in the door when days were going out. Days had been there for muster already and were available to head out if needed the minute they were on duty. There was a bigger overlap between days and afternoons and and large overlap between afternoons and midnights. Days 0645-1730. Afternoons 1530-0215. Midnights 2030-0715. Detectives, Traffic and Community Policing had their own separate schedules. There are many variations out there. Different methods work for different departments depending on size, responsibilities etc. I thought ours was pretty ideal.
Some departments run rotating shifts. You do so many days or weeks on one shift then rotate. We had steady shifts. Unless something happened like an injury on another shift you were pretty much guaranteed to be on that shift for a year. There was no need to entice people to work midnights. Every year you put in your preference. Shifts were assigned by seniority. If you don’t have seniority you get what’s left. That’s not always midnights. I’ve known guys who worked midnights their entire career. Each shift has good and bad points.
I know some places that pay for cops to come in and workout before shift. If you can get it in your contract great. Most places don’t. Just like every place I know you have to be ready the minute they start paying you.
I never understood the term Lost Time in that show. I figured it was either formal or informal comp time. It’s not a term I’ve heard anywhere else. The NYPD and LAPD love their jargon. Through TV shows some of it has seeped into other departments but they still have (separate) languages of their own.
We run 5 shifts:
1st- 8am-4pm
2nd- 4p-12midnight
3rd- 12midnight to 8am
Swing Shift #1- 11am-7pm
Swing Shift #2- 8pm-4am
All Officers, Sergeants, and Detectives are on one of those shifts and it’s permanent unless you seek a transfer to another shift. We are also allowed to do switches with Officers on other shifts or who have different off days. For instance, if I really need Tuesday off I can switch with an Officer whose off day is Tuesday and then work his Saturday for him which is one of my off days. This is a great way to spare vacation/comp/flex days.
Ranks higher than Sergeant have a different schedule:
6am-2pm
10am-6pm
2pm-10pm
There are no ranks higher than Sergeant schedule on the overnight shift. Many times there aren’t any Sergeants either. That’s why they have Lead Officers such as myself to make decisions overnight. I refuse to apply for a Sergeants promotion because I would have to give up my weeknds that I have off.
No rank or a little extra pay is worth the great schedule I have!
If it was realistic, they’d arrest the perp in one season, and have the trial a season or two later.
Homicide: Life on the Street was one of the few that tried to do it right. Some cases were solved immediately. Some took multiple episodes. Some never got solved. Then with rating problems came the change to everything getting wrapped up in an hour.
Could you imagine what it would be like if there was no overlap of shifts. Before end of shift all the cops out on patrol head into the station, get there and check out. The next shift clocks in and goes to roll call and pick up all their equipment and cars then head out on patrol. There would be a period of time with no out on patrol. This would be relieved by using swing shifts.
In days of old when relieving a watch in the engine room of ship the oncoming engineer met with the engineer he was relieving at 10 minutes before 8 bells(10 minutes before 4, 8, or 12). During this time the engineer being relieved would pass on necessary information, then he would stay until 10 minutes after the hour to besure if anything happened he would be more familure with the plant. If anything happened in the 1st 10 minutes it was the responsibility it was the engineer being relieved, if after the hour it was the relieving engineers.
Some of this still holds somewhat true in both marine engineering and stationary engineering jobs. It is still the custom to relieve by 10 minutes before the hour, but as soon as all the necessary information is passed on the relieved engineer says good noght.
So how does this work?
If at the end of a shift, a cop is taking care of a complex situation. Say, a traffic accident, with three injured people, 2 wrecked cars, a drunk driver arrested, a small child in the car. So the cop needs to arrange and make sure that: two ambulances arrive, 2 tow trucks remove the vehicles, a social worker takes the baby, etc. This will take an hour.
But meanwhile, the incoming shift is stuck at the station, waiting for the cop car to return, so they can start working. Do they just twiddle their thumbs for an hour?
Yes. Why is hard to believe?
People in many professions end up “twiddling their thumbs” because the equipment they need is held up somewhere.