In some departments, each officer has their own car. Which they drive home at the end of the shift. It cause more of a passive visible police presence when police-labeled cars are sitting in ordinary driveways in ordinary neighborhoods.
Lots of paperwork, always.
We had enough cars for each shift to have their own cars. Not enough for each officer to have their own take home car. On occasion because of maintenance, accidents or cars being switched over for new cars some shifts would be temporarily short on cars. Yes on some occasions someone would have to wait at the station for their car to become available. Planning kept that down to a minimum.
First many/most depts have more cars than what is needed for a shift to patrol, this includes extra cars to allow for routine maint/repairs, extra cops during the shift transition, cops not on patrol to take a car somewhere (gun range, class, etc.)
The cop handling the MVA is going to have to process the arrestee & do lots of paperwork; the processing will be done back at the station & the paperwork can be done anywhere. They could head back to the station as soon as the scene was cleared. In fact he might head back before the scene is cleared, turning the traffic control component over to a fellow officer while he processes the drunk.
All that is true. As noted above we had more than enough cars to go around under normal circumstances. Every now and then Murphy’s Law comes into play and a bunch of cars all go down at once.
Most cops in the US and Canada seem to work 8 hour shifts or 10 hour shifts with some even 12 hour shifts but most seem mostly be 8 or 10 hour shift.
I don’t think you will find any department working 5 hours or 6 hour shift in the US or Canada may be some where in Europe.
And it seems to be work three on and than off than three on again.
We worked 10.75 hours, 4 days on 4 days off.
Many departments work a Pitman schedule or a modified Pitman.
- Two working days.
- Two days off.
- Three working days.
- Two days off.
- Two working days.
- Three days off.
There isn’t one schedule that will work for everyone. It greatly depends on what coverage is needed and how big the department is.
What the heck are you talking about? This is exactly how it is in the majority of the United States. For every large major agency there are thousands of smaller municipalities that do not have the staff nor budget for swing shifts or crossover shifts. There are indeed times during the day when nobody is on the street.
It doesn’t just happen in small towns, either. During my first career I was a Deputy for Milwaukee County. The Patrol Bureau schedule at the time was 6am-2pm, 2pm-10pm, 10pm-6am. There was a mandatory roll call. The county had a contract with the state to patrol the freeways in Milwaukee County. So State Patrol did not actively patrol the interstate in the county and neither did the municipalities. So from approximately 530am-630am/130pm-230pm/930pm-1030pm Your chances of running into a snag (radar speed trap) were practically zero. There wasn’t anyone on the road.
I retired from there in 2007 so if this has changed I am unaware of it. My current agency does have swing shifts but we are a larger department with a city population over 60K.
But in a lot of cities, big and small, there are times daily when nobody is out on patrol.
Boding mine:
Your kidding.
A hot mess like that will take several hours.
Just processing a DUI alone can be 3 hours.
DUI and domestic violence are among the biggest pains in the ass arrests there are. Talk about paperwork. And the rigmarole of everything involved is insane.